We're Back!

Blogger, forgive me for I have sinned. It has been 45 days since my last blog post.

I suppose some of you may have wondered what has been happening with Condor. “Did they get overwhelmed and give up?” “Did they finish it and go sailing without telling us?” Well, the truth is that we’ve been busy. I have been busy working at the Downtown Sailing Center. Suzanne has been busy picking up the slack, working on Condor. Yes, I was able to make a few trips down to work on things, but Suzanne has been faithfully making a trip of two a week to try to chop away at our to-do list.

And, yes, we kind of did get her done and sail her away without telling you. So, I’m filling you in now. We finished the top priority tasks last Friday and Saturday. We spent our first night aboard last Friday night. Granted, she was still sitting on the hard, but we were aboard.

So, Matt had finished the sail. He was a little behind schedule because of the great blizzards of 2010. Suzanne, with a little help from the kids at various times, replaced the rotten subfloor. We got the seacocks rebuilt and finished the engine cooling system. We even rebuilt the head (and we used all the parts in the kit – no left over red parts). We’ll try to back up at some point and try to get some documentation of these project s for those interested.

The plan was to have Condor launched on Wednesday. We had noticed when we were at the boat yard on Friday/Saturday that there was a boat waiting to be hauled that did get hauled. Turns out the travel lift was broken. Lenny assured me that he would get it fixed. They put a new distributor on and it ran well, but wouldn’t hoist. What good is a travel lift that can’t pick up a boat? Yeah, I know a couple of people who wouldn’t care. They think it would be neat to have one to drive to work.

Lenny reassured me again that they would find and fix the problem. Tweaking and jury rigging the hydraulic system should allow it to hoist Condor. Sounds kinda iffy to me. But, I suppose if it can pick he up, what’s the worst that could happen? Don’t answer that!

Lenny avoided my pestering calls because he wasn’t sure of the answer he could give me. Finally, 6p.m. on Thursday evening he calls to tell me that it will work. He had hoisted another boat and would be able to hoist Condor Friday morning. Now we just had to get there. Sam had class Thursday night, but agreed to drive us down after class and drop us off so we wouldn’t have to make another trip to get the car back.

We got to the boat late Thursday night, and before settling in for our second night aboard, I decided to torque the keelboats. You may have read about the condition of the keel. Many people believed that the keel bolts had rusted away and that was the reason for the corroded spots in the lead. Much to my relief, I was only able to put about a quarter turn on the bolts. They were good and solid.

Jimmy showed up about 9:45 Friday morning – I rebuilt a winch while I was waiting. He maneuvered the hoist around and picked Condor up. The keel stayed on! A relief, but after re-torquing the keelbolts, I wasn’t really too concerned.

He lowered her into the water and we quickly jumped onboard and checked every through hull, the stuffing box and the bilge to make sure nothing was leaking. No leaks! We motored her over to the fuel dock where we could bend on the main, fill the tanks and make a few last inspections then we headed to Baltimore. But that’s another story.

And I promise I won’t make you wait 45 days to hear it.