First "sail" of the season...

[bobdugan]

I was talking to my son yesterday about silly worries. He worries a lot about missing the bus in the morning. I told him that if he missed the bus in the morning, I would drive him into school. It's no big deal. I also told him that I had a silly worry about docking... I don't like docking. I get nervous, my brain and common sense freeze, and I have many near disasters. I have books on how to dock, but so far they haven't helped. What has helped is my wife... she is amazing at many things including bright work and close quarter maneuvering. She's my wife though and you can't have her. I made her a deal that I wanted to split docking duties 50/50 until I got the hang of it. It's been about 10 years and I things have improved tremendously. Fifty percent of the time we dock really well.

It's a new season so I thought I'd take the boat off the dock and out to our mooring. I practiced in my mind all week backing out of the slip, what direction the wheel should turn and where the stern would go. What I didn't practice was the gust of wind that caught the bow and swung the boat in the wrong direction as I backed out. In tight quarters it wasn't possible for me to turn the boat around so I tried to back out of the docking area... but the wind blew me down on the set of docks across from my slip... lots of nice boat near misses. I gunned the engine a little and we ended up near some open dock space so we docked and thought about our next plan. Using spring lines we turned the boat around in the right direction and headed out to the mooring... we patted ourselves on the back for this... we're such salty sea dogs. We make mistakes and fix them yeah for us!

Five minutes out from the dock the engine overheated. We looked around for a mooring to tie up to, but it's very early in the season so few moorings have pennants. I sent my wife down below to grab our boat hook so we could catch one and tie up to it. She couldn't find the boat hook anywhere (the yard moved the boat hook for some reason). I looked out for some pick up buoys and found one pretty close by. As I neared the pickup stick, my wife made a grab for it but the stick was too short and she missed. Fortunately I was able to grab the stick from the cockpit and she secured the pennant on the stern cleat. I shut down the engine and started working on the overheating problem.

I took off the impeller housing and looked at the impeller. It looked great. I could tell from the temperature of the engine hoses that water was not making it from the impeller to the rest of the engine coolant system... but the impeller looked great. There was water in the hose leading to the impeller, there was water in the strainer... it was really bugging me. I decided to replace the impeller and see what happened.

It was about this time that the owners of the mooring arrived and asked us to leave the mooring. They looked annoyed. I explained our situation as they circled our boat... then the skipper said "Hey are you Bob Dugan?". I said yes... and they reintroduced themselves as Joe and Kathy… a couple we bonded with over a period of a week of fog filled Maine cruising almost 10 years ago in our CD25D "Cricket". We send them a Christmas card every year… good emergency mooring service insurance. Joe & Kathy rafted up to us and tried to help but they were puzzled too.

We called for help at the marina and the launch driver came out and towed us back to the dock. Becky’s turn at the helm and the driver complemented her helmsmanship as she docked the boat under tow. She's that good.

Another hour went by and I finally figured out the problem. Some plant/plastic material had completely blocked the raw water intake. Opening the seacock with the hose removed produced no water. I just needed to calm down and think about the problem logically, then eliminate variables starting at the source and ending at the impeller. I had a hard time clearing seacock until my wife suggested using a thin, long, wooden skewer… brilliant! Water came pouring in, I put the hose back on the seacock, tightened the clamps, started the engine, and lots of water came out the exhaust.

Becky gave me a big smooch and told me that she really needed me on the boat. It made me feel much better about docking.

Bob

[David Patterson]

Informative, entertaining, and engagingly wry. Thank you. Having experienced the unexpected puff of wind myself now and then, your post reminds me to learn more about fending off techniques.

[Kevin_P]

I really enjoyed your post. I've been there myself.
Thanks for sharing.
-Kevin

[chase]

Great post, Bob. On one of my cruises down the coast I made friends with a semi-prominent circumnavigator, with some significant passagemaking experience over the years. He was hilarious when it came to docking - gave me hope!

It also makes me anxious, especially when I'm singlehanding, which is a lot.

Glad your water problem was simple, and hope you have some great sailing this season.

Chase

[Steve Laume]

Great post Bob. I think we all fear docking unless there is little or no wind and it is blowing from the front end of the dock. Plus there are all those lines and fenders to deal with. I do love my mooring.

I try not to worry about things until they happen and then trust my analytical skills and ingenuity to deal with them. Liz is just the opposite and my logic drives her crazy. She will worry about everything that could possibly go wrong and try to figure out what to do ahead of time, even if nothing ever does. The problem with trying to find solutions before problems occur is that you can never consider all the variables. Plus you spend a lot of time worrying for nothing. When I worry there is good reason.

As for mistakes, I learned a lot about them through my carpentry work. You can be as careful as you could possibly be and you are still going to mess up some times. The trick is to make the fix look better than what it would have originally been. I don't know how this relates to crashing into someone else's very expensive boat but that is beside the point.

Just don't worry too much, everything usually works out okay, Steve.

[Skeep]

Great posting, one we can all relate to from time to time at least. It is when I feel over confident I begin to really worry however. Looks like you have rightly balanced your mooring inefficiencies with your relational strengths and won hands down! Being human and knowing it is a great strength!

[John Ring]

Glad to hear you guys are on the water, in that amazing Cape Dory 34D! Gotta know - is there a strainer on the outside of the hull? Just a through-hull & strainer inside?

I've installed these Groco RSC hinged strainers around the intake on my last few boats & I really like them. They swing open so I can clean & paint around the intake, and inside the strainer.



Cheers,
John
CD36 Tiara
http://home.comcast.net/~ringj/

[bobdugan]

skewer.jpg

Thanks for all the kind words everyone.

John... the 34D is mostly behaving now. I do have a strainer similar to that groco... but it doesn't hinge. I like that idea!

[Big E]

Save that skewer...It'll be the best sishkebob you'll ever eat!

[Steve Laume]

I knew we had those skewers on board for more than just the BQ, I just didn't know what the reason was. We also keep a board mounted bilge pump That could be used to back wash the raw water intake.

Next time you haul or dive on your boat take a good look at the through hull strainer. In the mean time walk around the marina and look at the ones on the hard. A vast number of these strainers are nearly painted closed and it would take very little to clog them. If you are diving this summer go down there with a knife or screwdriver and scrape out the slots, Steve.

[Joe Myerson]

A great and entertaining post, Bob.

And John, where did you get that Groco strainer that opens, and how difficult is it to mount? My boat is still on the hard for about a week, and this would be a good time to replace the existing strainer, which seems to be greatly favored by barnacles.

--Joe
P.S. the Google gods tell me that Hamilton Marine stocks the strainers.

[gates_cliff]

I am so thrilled to see a post like this! I moved my boat to a different marina this year, I was in Deale, MD and moved to Galesville on the West River, not too far. I had made arrangements for my daughter to meet me and leave a car at the, new to me, marina and then drop me off at the old marina. Unbeknownst to me, until Saturday morning, the yard had a boat stored in my new slip, so eventually made some arrangements and decided to take the boat up on Sunday, nicer day predicted anyway. So, I go down and get everything ready and planned in my mind how to get out of the slip (I was by myself), wind was blowing pretty good so used a spring line to keep my from getting blown into pilings or worse, everything went like clockwork (a rarity for me). Anyway, got out of the slip, motored out and got ready to raise the sails. I had previously reefed the main, since the wind was 20-25 and I have a hank on jib. So far so good, I leave the engine running in case I've put the jib on upside down or something (which might have happened in the distant past).

So get under sail, and go to turn engine off, ummmm, throttle lever moves freely but nothing happens, doesn't stop engine, doesn't increase RPM, nothing. So, check forward and reverse, ummm nothing! So, I decide to go ahead and sail up to new locaiton and if I can't get the engine to respond, think I'll call Tow Boat US. And, for once in my life I had planned ahead and saved the different numbers for them. I'm patting myself on the back thinking I'm really prepared. The good news is the engine ran the entire time, and ran flawlessly.

So after a couple of hours of a wet but invigorating sail, I finally turn into the West River (I'm on the Chesapeake). Of course, in this case, that puts the wind directly on my nose, so I tack back and forth for awhile and get myself up the river and decide it might be a good idea to motor the rest of the way, well there was nothing I could do to get the engine to respond to the fwd/reverse, thinking at least I'd have control with the engine idling. So heave to, go below and call Tow Boat US, get a message that it is not a wokring number, ah the best laid plans, etc! More on this later.

So, I called the dock master at the new marina and tell him my predicament and say I have no choice but to sail in and can I get some help. He says no problem, by the way what a great guy he is. So I keep working up wind and finally get close enough to the fuel dock and coast up to it, get a little help with securing lines, etc and the boat is fine. Withe boat docked, I go below and find where the throttle is and am able to shut the engine down. Being Sunday evening by this time the marina had nobody else around so it was agreed that I could leave my boat at the fuel dock for the night. I put out all the fenders I had and fortunately the wind was blowing the boat off the dock anyway. They moved my boat around to its new slip Monday morning.

Back to Tow Boat US, Monday morning I get a text message from the number I called asking me if I was someone named Scott! I texted back and said no, then went on to explain what happened. The only reponse was glad everything worked out and "that's weird".

So now, I need to figure what's broken and how to repair it. I just looked up new engine controls and find that Teleflex makes a 2 lever shift control, but the price is $790.00 from West Marine and that doesn't include new control cables. I'm rethinking that idea and wondering if I can just replace the cables.

I have a Westerbeke engine. Any thoughts or advice would be quite welcome!

[Jeff G]

Bob, I remember a similar situation when we were off P'town. That time we used a long phillips head screwdriver. Glad you resolved the problem.

[Dean Abramson]

Great post, Bob!