Little did we know what it was going to
take to get Outrageous ready to sail and to turn her
into our boat!
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| Cutting away Outrageous's winter coat |
We are in Annapolis, working 6 to 10
hours a day on the boat. (On the “short” days, we spend several
hours running around Annapolis picking up stuff we need.) The boat
hasn't been sailed for four years, and for four years dirt has been
accumulating. I have never done so much cleaning, polishing,
scrubbing, and painting, and placing my body in weird positions to do
it all. We don't have to go to the gym. The boat is still at the
previous owner's dock, in Saltworks Creek at Annapolis. Sixty steps
lead down a steep hill to his dock, and we negotiate these several
times each day. At night, we drag ourselves to our hotel room, too
tired for a night out on the town or to play the games (scrabble,
chess) that we brought along to keep ourselves from getting bored.
The previous, original owner of the
boat is a really neat guy. (You met Grover in a previous blog.) After
we bought the boat, he had it shrink wrapped and kept it heated until
we were able to come and begin working on it. And he's letting us
keep it at his dock free while we get it ready to go to sea again.
But Grover is a bit of a pack rat. He tells us he can't bring himself
to throw away a bit of line (rope to you landlubbers), and I believe
him. You never know when you might need some! And he had spares for
the spares for the spares. He had prepared himself and the boat for
extended cruising in remote parts of the world, and he wanted to be
entirely self sufficient. I'm pretty sure that whenever he replaced
an old part with a new one, he kept the old, just in case he might
have to piece something together sometime. It added up to 25 years of
accumulated gear, spare parts, and such. All well and good, but Jim
and I wouldn't know what to do with most of the stuff, and besides we
have to make room for our own junk. Also, there were multiple books
on every nautical topic and dozens of VCR tapes for a TV/video
player which we also threw out.
So we've been up to our . . . ears in
work, going through drawer after drawer and locker after locker,
sorting through stuff and trying to decide what to keep and what to
get rid of. I never knew that you could store so much on a boat. The
first day of this (our second day here) we got rid of 12 big garbage
bags full of stuff. After a few days of this, it began to get real
discouraging. But then we just decided that what had to go, had to
go, and if we found out later that we needed something, we'd just
have to buy it. Every once in a while Grover will come across
something we are throwing out and say, “Do you really want to get
rid of this?” Sometimes we keep it. We ended up carting away over
twenty five bags of stuff. Fortunately there's a trail from the boat
up to the road, and Grover loaned us his golf cart to get stuff up
the hill, so we didn't have to haul it all up the stairs. But taking
the golf cart up and down the steep trail is as thrilling as a
carnival ride.
When we're not cleaning and sorting and
throwing things away we are running around Annapolis shopping for
marine items and talking and working with the people who specialize
in some aspect of boating, e.g., graphics, engines, electrical work,
dodgers (the boat's windshield), cushions, bottom painting, etc. It's
real easy to spend money on this project. The old saying is that if
you want to know what sailing is like, just stand in a cold shower
and tear up $100 bills. We're finding out what the tearing up bills
part is like. Only, it could be $1000 dollar bills!
We are getting daily inservice training
on the mechanics of the boat, including marine toilet, diesel engine,
bilge pumps, water tanks, refrigeration, and on and on. We have a
crew of experts working on the engine, rigging, and the canvas. Our
sails have gone to the sailmaker's to be checked, repaired where
necessary, and washed. We've even had our 120 gallons of diesel fuel
polished. And Grover comes around every afternoon, after managing his
four coffee shops (and remember, Grover is 81 years old) to answer
questions and help us out. Some day we may even be able to sail the
boat.
There are several things that have to
be done that don't exactly take an expert, but they do take knowhow
and time, both of which we have too little of. Things like installing
a new water pressure tank or a vent hose to the diesel stove. To our
great fortune, Grover introduced us to someone who is has quite a bit
of both (knowhow and time). Rob Sutherland has owned boats all of his
life and lived aboard for seventeen years. Compared to Jim, he's a
young man (only 64) and can crawl into spaces that are getting a bit
difficult for Jim. He's already helped us out a lot and will continue
working on the boat while we are in Ann Arbor. Thank the gods for
Rob!
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| Spring arrived while we were here! |
We haven't tackled the technology side
of things yet. One addition we'll be making is a chart plotter. It's
a little screen, usually by the boat's wheel, that shows the nautical
chart (i.e., map) and a little icon that shows where the boat is.
Some sailors have actually sunk their boats steering the icon on the
chart plotter instead of looking where their boats were in the water.
Sailors talk about having a satellite phone to the tune of $1500
plus $50 dollars a month for about 10 minutes of talking if you are
sinking. We decided that we'll just sink and not spend the money. We
will have a life raft and an EPIRB that gives off a signal that tells
someone where you were when your ship went down. I'm not sure who
that someone is.
We're getting things under control,
though. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and the boat
will be beautiful when we get done with her. And we are having fun,
even if we are exhausted at the end of the day. Jim says he never
could have taken on this project without me. He says I'm the driving
force. We're nearly done with this phase of our work and easing off
a bit. Jim is out on the dock washing sheets (the lines that go to
the sails). He says he will do the pillow cases next.
On our next trip here Outrageous
will be taken to the boatyard and hauled out of the water to have her
bottom done and for a few other jobs that have to be done while she
is “on the hard,” as sailors say. One of those jobs will be to
peel off her old name. Outrageous doesn't quite fit Jim's and my
feelings about who we want her to be. The new name she will sport on
her stern quarters will be BEL CANTO, Italian for beautiful
song or beautiful singing. Home port, ANN ARBOR, MI.
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| Sails back on, ready to go! |
