March 26 - April 19 -- Sheltered In Place by Covid 19

Twenty six days with just three visits to the boat, for a total of only about twelve hours of work. I wipe down our car's seat, armrests and controls (because our garage attendant may unknowingly be infectious) and then drive to the boat. Hardly anyone is working; the Yacht Clubs have been ordered shut down. The clubhouses are locked but from my parking spot at the Huguenot it has been a short, fortunately lonely, walk to ILENE -- easy to maintain social distance -- I never see a soul! And once the ladder is set up and I've climbed aboard, I'm hundreds of feet from any human. One short day Lene was with me and helped me lift a new tank from the ground to the cockpit and lower an old one. With her aboard, since we share a bed unmasked, it was a masks off day . But the day I got very much needed help from nephew Mendy, who lives with his father, who is sick, not from Covid 19, was a masks on workday.

All of the work has been related to the new fuel tanks, with some ingenuity and some stupidity in the process. Here is the pit for the forward tank, empty and cleaned. From aft (left): old aft tank, pit for forward tank, aft head's holding tank, bilge and base of mast.

 Here is the new forward tank before  being lowered into its pit and then me hovering over it attaching the fuel lines.

How to get the remaining clean diesel fuel from the old aft tank into the new forward tank? The siphon did not work after a gallon because there was not enough height differential. With the small brass hand powered cylinder pump got about four gallons out into an empty antifreeze bottle, and thence via funnel into the new forward tank. This worked especially after I repaired a small pinhole in the uptake hose of that pump where it had been bent. Self adhesive tape does work magic. The final few gallons were transferred by removing the same uptake hose from the hand pump, heating one end and sliding it onto one of the nipples for the fuel lines of the tank, sealing the other nipple with self adhesive tape and then lifting the tank, placing it on its end and watching the pink fuel trickle through the hose into the forward tank for about 20 minutes.

Ingenuity is usually the product of desperation. One bolt on one of the nose clamps that secures the 1.5 inch diameter rubber fuel fill hose to its pipe on the aft tank was rusted and in a tight space. After every other tool failed to fit, to hold or have room to turn, my new mini vise grip got its first chance to shine. I took up the two pieces of cabin sole in the aft cabin and cleaned the crud from the small void beneath them because that same hose passes to ILENE's port side through that void. This was so Mendy would be able to grasp and pull the hose to that side, off of the tank's aluminum tube. But that did not work, even with heat, because the hose passes through both sides of a fiberglass longitudinal stringer which provided way too much friction against its sides. In the end we used the heat gun to soften the rubber hose, stuck a thin flat screw driver blade between metal and rubber, sprayed in lubricant and then, after renewed application of heat, lifted the tank up and out toward starboard, away from the rubber hose --  rather than pull the hose away from the tank.

But that was when disaster struck. Well, maybe disaster is too strong a word for it because all it will take to fix the problem is two round trip drives to Luthers in Bristol RI, for that shop to saw 6.5 inches out of the length of the aft tank, weld the two parts back together again and pressure test it overnight to assure that it it is air tight. I am so angry at myself for my stupidity in causing this costly and wasteful problem. The fore and aft tanks are equally wide but vary in depth because the hull of the boat slopes gradually upward toward the stern. I measured the width and the depth at both ends and ASSUMED that the fore and aft tanks were equally long: 41 inches. So this was not a case of failing to follow the wise old maxim:"measure twice, cut once". I did not measure AT ALL, but assumed that the two tanks were the same length. And whoever assumes, as another pithy saying goes, makes an ASS of u and ME! Here are the old and new tanks, side view, in the cockpit except the angle exaggerates the difference between their lengths.

Mendy will accompany me on the eight hour round trip drive to Bristol.

We have been enjoying heated up takeout food cooked by the Harlem's excellent chef/caterer, Anne. The drive to RI will be an opportunity to
 pick up this week's ration.

The good news is that Governor Cuomo has permitted marinas to reopen and both the Harlem and Huguenot have done so, albeit with social distancing and masks required. I have been advised that it will be about three weeks until ILENE can be launched, time to finish the fuel tank job, the bottom, the freeboard and all of many other spring chores.
Speaking of old and new, good news about the crew: After almost a year of following his older sister, Alphie, around, Cruiser has finally become tolerated by her.