Jedi Fur Ball or Who is Steve's Mom?

September 20, 2006

Wednesday, September 20, 2006 - Buddy Fred's Dock, Oriental, NC
By Tom

Well, as you can see from our current location, we have moved the boat about 150 feet to the Buddy Fred's dock. Apparently, Team Dream Catcher is now persona-non-grata with Steve from the Steve and Sally Resort, Spa and Marina and as such, we decided to move the boat here rather than put up with him treating us like we're back in the third grade.

After 6 weeks of ignoring both Amy and I, Steve finally let us know that he didn't think "Who is Steve's mom?" was the correct answer to the Jeopardy question "Who was Richard the Second's first wife?". Wow! I can definitely see the insult to his long since deceased mom there! Given some of the conversations we have had about mine and Amy's family with Steve over the last three years, this definitely sounds like a case of someone who can dish it out, but not take it.

Someone might need a time out. Can you say grumpy old man? I think you can. Anyhow, C'est la vie! On with the show.

On the boat front, we have made mega progress. Check out my new arch shown stage right. Dad (mine) and I went to the metal shop back home and bought $130 worth of aluminium tubing. We then proceeded to cut, bend, and weld a new dinghy engine hoist, a radar mount and a new and improved solar panel/dinghy arch.

All of these new pieces are bolt on rather than a more permanent welded on structure. The reason for this is two fold. First, someday we might want to sell this boat and unless another cruising couple buy it, being able to return the boat to the "factory" finish will help. Secondly, I don't have a welder I can use down here. So here we are.

Both the crane and the radar mount use several 1 inch u-bolts to attach themselves to the existing stainless steel railing. The arch is mated to the factory davits via 8 - 2 inch stainless steel exhaust clamps and the solar panels attach to custom fit aluminum stringers and are each held on with 6 stainless steel self tapping screws.

See accompanying photos for a more details.

We have also finished sewing together our brand new spinnaker! It took 5 days of solid work, but the assembly was straight forward and pretty easy.

The first two days were spent laying out the 37 different panels that make up the sail and taping them to their corresponding neighbor. It took both Amy and I to properly stretch, tension, and stick these panels together. Although the directions say you can do it by yourself, I'm not sure how.

The second two days were spent double stitching every seam. I figure there are just over 400,000 stitches in this construction. The hardest part of the sewing was connecting the three separate main sections. The bulkiness of the whole sail made it difficult to slide the sail into the sewing machine.

The final day was spent attaching hardware and putting the edge trim on. I have to say I was really impressed with the Sailrite kit. We paid $730 for the kit and it included everything we needed except the sewing machine. The lowest quote I got for the same sail from a sail loft was $2100! Of course, seeing the labor that goes into one of these, I guess I can see why they are so expensive.

We haven't flown it yet as we are still tied up to the dock, but we plan on trying it out soon. I'll post pictures when we do.

In other news, now that the radar is completely installed, we have been practicing identifying targets from the dock. Hopefully this means no more things that go bump in the night.

Several readers have asked why I chose to mount the radar a mere 9 feet off of the water. Well, there were a couple of reasons. One, we will only be using the radar in close quarter situations, i.e. things like entering a harbour at night or crossing a major shipping lane in the dark. Two, I wanted to make sure that the radar was mounted as close to the boats center of gravity so as to minimize the effects of rolling offshore. And finally, as lame as it sounds, I didn't want to drill holes in the mast to mount the big-ass radome if I didn't have to.

Realistically, we can't afford the power requirements to run the radar all the time. Having said that, I have calculated that at nine feet off of the water, we can see a nine foot tall target at about 6.8 miles away. This should prove to be plenty of time for evasive maneuvers.

By the way, don't you think that with the radome mounted the way it is it looks an awful lot like R2-D2 from Star Wars? Milo says he always wanted his own R2 unit. Oh yeah, the force is strong with that one.

In cooking news, I have mounted our new grill and we are both extremely happy with the much larger surface area. I suspect that we will now be able to cook most of our grilled meals at one time as opposed to cooking in several shifts. I still need to decide if we are going to hook the grill up to our main propane storage or perhaps get another propane tank for dedicated grill use.

As I write this now, we our home at my brothers house in Maryland. This past weekend we went to Mark and our new sister in law Kristy's wedding. It was an Asian themed affair and a good time was had by all. Congratulations guys, best of luck.

While we are home, I have made two additional struts for the larger solar panel. The ones I made last time turned out to be too thin and they crumpled under the weight of said panel. While home, I also sewed a new motorcycle seat for a custom motorcycle my brother has been working on for the last year or so. I tried to include photographic evidence at the right, but Milo accidentally erased all of the pictures.

Well, that about brings you up to speed. We are getting ready to head back to the boat tomorrow and after that we make the final push to ready the boat. We should be ready to leave right around October 2 or 3.

It's getting cold and we're about to cast off! Stay tuned, more to follow.