Sailing Terrapin

Since we were now in a place that we would be for a while, we have several boat projects that have been building and it was time to get to work. Most of the projects we are able to work on ourselves but a couple of them would involve finding a professional to assist.

First on the list was an engine service. Sailing from the Chesapeake up to Canada, across the Atlantic to Spain, north to Ireland and east to England incurred hours on the engine and it was time to change all the engine oil, transmission fluid, the filters, check the water separator and fuel filters, check the impellers and make sure our Yanmar was happy. Fortunately, our engine access is reasonably good - not as good as an engine room but pretty good considering Terrapin is a 1982.

Next up - our compression post. This is a steel rod that runs vertically next to the mast, into the cabin, down to the keel. It helps the deck and the structure of the boat as it pounds into waves and flexes. We had noticed a small crack in the base plate while offshore and knew it had to be managed at some point. This would require removing the compression post, fabricating a new base plate and reinstalling.

Another project we had been working on since Deltaville was our Jordan Series Drogue (JSD). The JSD is a line that will have 132 jellyfish-like cones tied to it that will be deployed when wind speed and waves are so high, speed has to be reduced to prevent the boat from broaching (flipping upside down end over end). This is a tool that we would like to have on the boat for extreme situations but really don't want to be in conditions that require its use. It has been a big project to undertake and we have continued to work on it as time has been available. We are almost done.

User manuals are critical information on the boat. Since we have dozens of disparate systems that have to function together to move the boat forward comfortably, we need to make sure we have the appropriate information to fix each of those systems. I had been able to keep the manuals together but my filing system had gotten out of control as new manuals had been added and systems replaced. Usually when you need the information, because something is not working, you don't have time to fumble through pieces of paper to find what you're looking for, so having the manuals organized helps to keep stress levels low.

As long as we have had Terrapin, there have been issues that we have dealt with that didn't work as they should but they weren't critical and out attention was on other things. As with any previously owned boat, sometimes things have been done incorrectly for some unknown reason and you are left with the legacy of a) figuring out what happened b) sorting it out so it works as designed, or as close as possible. Now was the time to fix the odds and ends that we had been putting off. Like our deck light. The deck light which shines down on the deck and the steaming light which shines out from the mast are wired together but have different switches on the electrical panel. The problem was the deck light wouldn't turn on but the steaming light would and the root of the problem was not only the lightbulb. So, through hours and days of troubleshooting Baxter fixed it. For the first time, we have a deck light that works when the deck light is switched on and a steaming light when the steaming light is turned on. Turns out it was a bad switch, a bad relay and a bad lightbulb. Hard to troubleshoot, but, he fixed it and it all works perfectly now.

There were still a few things on our list but this was a good start and we had another five months left to finish the things we needed to get done.

Time for an engine service.

The compression post is the metal rod that screws into the white post on the bottom. You can see the base of the post has a small crack, caused by corrosion due to the aluminum of the mast and the stainless steel plate.