IainBlog

Sat - November 3, 2007

THE BLOG HAS MOVED

There will be no more entries posted here, please change your bookmark to http://sommerville.info or http://web.mac.com/iain_sommerville/ (the latter is faster though may change in forthcoming years).

Click here for the new RSS feed.

Posted at 11:21 AM

Thu - November 1, 2007

Headin' South

We have finally left Calvert Marina and are now moored back at York River Yacht Haven in Virginia after anchoring at Reedville last night. There is a South from Solomons page with the logs and a few photos here....

Posted at 04:56 PM

Tue - October 30, 2007

New Stove

Shortly after buying the boat, we had decided that the Eno stove was not the best in the world. The small burner worked well, however the oven could not roast a parsnip in a day and the large burner cut out when it was cold or the slightest breeze was in the cabin. Finally the galley (kitchen) is transformed. Thanks to great advice from Gary (who performed the same transplant in his galley) and some effective plumbing by Paul (from Zahnisers) a Force 10 Euro Compact stove, which even has a grill (Ruth is already salivating at the thought of toasted English muffins and peanut butter) is now the pride of place in the galley. This all means we can start heading south towards warmer weather (and more caulking) tomorrow (and something else off the todo list )......

Posted at 10:51 PM

Hauled Again

Due to the requirements of our new insurance company, we were temporarily hauled out of the water for another survey. It went fairly smoothly, not surprisingly since it was 18 months since the last one, though Michael did find a loose through-hull which we replaced (it was the shower outlet which was just above the water-line). The big news was that the generator came back to life (4 boat dollars later) thanks to a complete rebuild of the engine block and over a day of trying to re-install it back on the boat (guess I should look on the bright side in that it is a couple of years before I have to change the coolant and oil - the recurring maintenance list looks a little lighter). The boat is now ready to head south.....

Posted at 03:54 PM

Mon - October 29, 2007

Return of the Genset

The genset parts finally arrived at Zahniser's Yachting Center on Friday, and amazingly, Fischer Panda sent the right parts (for the critical items at least- we will still have to wing it for the power terminals and the engine mounts which were missing parts). Paul (from Zahniser's) rebuilt the block with the new piston rings, cylinder head and valves on Friday and started the install today. Unfortunately, when Fischer-Panda designed the generator, they made the lower part of the casing an inch or two too high to allow any of the 'accessories' (cooling system, starter motor, exhaust system, control system etc) to be installed once the engine mounts are in place (which are hard to do after the accessories are installed). It will hopefully be completed tomorrow; the picture shows the current state. We have a boat survey tomorrow as we are changing insurance company to save around $1,000 a year on our policy (unfortunately the survey costs around a $1,000 so I hope we stay with them more than a year). That meant getting things squeaky clean so a new mount for the aft fire extinguisher, all extinguishers serviced, new propane lines etc etc. Not much time for caulking.....

PS New blog site revamped with new style; about to change over so let me know if you hate the new layout

Posted at 10:03 PM

Wed - October 24, 2007

Rain at last

Rain was welcome for a couple of reasons. It hasn't rained here for a while (the lack of rain has even affected the crab industry due to high salinity in the bay), but most importantly it means we don't have to caulk for a few days. We have now used 18 tubes of caulk with 11 more staring at us (and probably another 10 or so required before it is completely done). Since we anticipate heading south in under a week (the genset cylinder head may arrive tomorrow) we decided to do an food/consumables inventory and restock for the winter since we currently have the use of a car. We discovered a number of items stowed in the deepest corners that were either well past their use by date or just plain scary. In the latter category was a jar of 'Ragu' pasta sauce that Susie had bought in Mexico almost a year ago. I had never tried 'Ragu' so gave it try tonight (Ruth was out in a bar with her brother) and it didn't taste too too bad with the addition of lots of onion, garlic, olive oil and cayenne pepper (then what wouldn't).

The restocking began in earnest this afternoon with visits to Target, Food Lion and the local Deli. Bit of a crisis on the 'critical items' front - I finished the Food Lion's stock of Bengal Spiced Mango Chutney. If they don't get more we may have to sail with Major Grey Mango Chutney or be 4 jars short of the minimum quantity with which we can set sail.... Fortunately they had plenty of 'tasty bite' curries so things aren't too bad.

Posted at 09:21 PM

Sun - October 21, 2007

Weekend in DC

We are still at Calvert Marina awaiting the genset parts so decided to spend the weekend in DC as their was a minor Feicht family gathering. Nell (and her girls) and Erin were in town to try and finalize details of Erin’s forthcoming wedding. Needless to say we stayed well away from that but we did head into DC to see the solar decathalon and enjoyed the party at Ann’s on Saturday night. The wheelbarrow race was quite a site to behold (Ruth and Claire won this heat) - not surprisingly the wine was already flowing. More pictures here. We even managed to get back to the boat in time to use up a complete tube of caulk on Sunday....... I have updated the new blog site with wider pages and underlined hyperlinks now I have figured out how to specify them.

Posted at 10:02 PM

Thu - October 18, 2007

What do you do when it is too wet for caulking

Get out the power tool......

Having bought a Fein Multimaster tool to help with caulk removal, we finally found a good use for it - it is an excellent sander. Our cockpit table now looks much better. I have also fixed the link to the updated blog page......

Posted at 05:06 PM

Wed - October 17, 2007

Blog will be moving.....

I have been publishing this using iblog for over 3 years, in which time the software has barely been updated and offers little support for features that have been in Mac OSX for a couple of years (they have been promising an update for almost a year now). In the next few weeks I will moving the blog over to iWeb '08 (aka 2.0.2), which I have been using to publish the rest of my site for a year or two. There are pros and cons of both however it will be easier to have everything in a single application as it can take care of links between different parts of the site automatically. Here is a preview of the format - I would welcome comments on the layout and how it renders on different machines. The main drawback of this style (the iWeb 'darkroom' theme) is that hyperlinks are not underlined - they are just a lighter shade of grey.

Apologies for the recent lack of updates which is due to a combination of caulking and lack of high speed internet access.

Posted at 11:34 AM

Mon - October 15, 2007

Still Caulkin'

We are finally back on the boat after a few days in DC with the Feichts - aka in-law's :) So it is back to caulking (another 120' or so done) and trying to get through the 'to be fixed urgently' list before we head south. We had bad news on one of the major items; the Fischer-Panda genset needs to be rebuilt and the cylinder head replaced (it is currently in pieces on a bench at Zahniser's machine shop). That will keep us here until next week since Fischer-Panda have no cylinder heads in stock - hopefully the weather will still be kind to us as we head south later than planned. Our new Force10 propane stove should arrive this week so I need to learn now to connect propane fittings; Ruth is also working on re-rigging our boom mounted sail bag to make it more usable. The picture is the genset just before it was removed from the boat. Hopefully the honeymoon will start soon......