July 2 - 17 — Home With Covid and then Getting ILENE Ready For Canada

 Yes the dreaded Covid! No worse for us than the common cold, but it kept us away from the water quite a while.

The windlass is fixed. The third day of working on it, alone, I gave it the acid test: it  passed.

The first of the three days my new mechanic, Pete, who I recommend (516-807-5340), (petemarine27@outlook.com) worked with me. (Well let’s be more accurate: he worked and I watched and helped) I’d seen him working under a power boat at the Huguenot and after chatting with him, figured he knew his business so took his number. He removed the electric motor which I took to Bronx Ignition for what turned out to be a free bench test. Five minutes. The problem was not the motor. The motor is to the right in the photo. I’ve cleaned the corrosion off of the aluminum attachment plate and will coat it with grease to prevent recurrence. Those are seriously large wires to carry the heavy electrical power that the Windlass requires.  I also purchased two 150 amp buss fuses and installed one, the other a spare. These are 15 amps higher than recommended, which I learned is OK. Pete did not leave until we saw that the motor turned the windlass to raise when the up button was pushed and lower it when the other button was pushed. Great. We’re done, but for the test. 

Next day I reattached the anchor to the chain and discovered two mechanical problems I had caused.

First, three strands of chain were hanging down out of the bottom of  the chain pipe through the upper portion of the anchor locker: (the white fiberglass tube in the background left of the photo) the correct one and two more representing a loop of chain that had somehow been pulled up into the pipe and jammed it. I tried to free it from the top but my tool (dentist’s pick taped to the side of a long screw driver) was ineffectual. How about from the bottom?  I had a piece of 3/8” dowel, almost four feet long left over from making bungs for the cabin sole project a few years ago. Just the sort of scrap that the Admiral is always after me to throw out. But I get it inserted from the bottom, twisted and the extraneous loop of chain fell back down! Hooray!  But not so fast, mister!  Yes, with chain attached, the windlass raised and lowered the anchor all right,  but only about two inches each way, followed by a loud “Clunk!”  A telephone consult to Pete. He said to check out the “stripper” — but ONLY AFTER you make sure the breaker is off — we don’t want mashed fingers. I tried to describe what I did to cause and then fix this problem to my mechanically astute friend Jim, in words, but failed, so here is a picture:

The stripper, that I have circled in orange, rotates on the central shaft, between the upper and lower plates of the capstan arrangement, marked in blue. (The chain runs around the gap between those plates - their ridges grip and their rotation lowers and raises the anchor chain.) Well I knew that the stripper could not be to the right of the vertical orange Allen bolt through the upper housing, labeled 34 in the diagram, so I put the stripper to the left of the bolt and it was the stripper that was causing the Clunk. Taking that vertical bolt out, I noticed the vertical hole through the stripper, and reinserted the bolt through that hole, locking the stripper in its proper place. No more clunk!

The third day, I motored to deeper water, lowered the anchor, got it set and used the windlass to kedge (pull) the boat to the anchor, putting maximum strain on the windlass. It works!

Also poured more than three pints of distilled water into the eighteen cells of the six house bank batteries, and closed up the aft cabin so that Lene can store our stuff where she wants it.

ILENE IS READY FOR NOVA SCOTIA AT LAST!  But a change in plans. All this Arctic, Covid and repair work made for a very late start and Lene had to be back early for a wedding and family visit in August. So Canada must wait until 2023.

But Eastchester Bay is not a bad spot in which to be stuck. We can go on the Eight Day Club Cruise that I organized, other local club cruises and some solo ones plus day sails with friends and the Wednesday Old Salts sails. We plan to bring our kitties aboard next week and live aboard, with access to our car in the Club’s parking lot this summer and New York’s cultural attractions.