Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Moving day ...

... has come ... and mostly gone. There is no sign of a truck, trailer, or driver. Not unexpected really, since we got a hint last week that the schedule would slip when there was a question about getting a road permit that extended over the holiday. Text messages went back and forth and by yesterday evening Sept 9th had become the new "moving day". I'm not exactly sure how it is that we couldn't get a truck here on a specific day even with months of lead time; something that in any other industry is as routine as breathing. But this is a "marine transport company". As soon as the adjective "marine" is attached to anything pretty much any semblance of normal operation can be dismissed.

Other than the total lack of professionalism (which no longer surprises me) I am trying to shrug off this additional delay as just another part of being a cruiser. Wait on weather, wait on tides, wait on currents ... wait on a truck. Waiting too many more days will start to be a problem; after all we really have no desire to winter in the Chesapeake Bay. So far we don't need to be gone as much as we would like to be gone. And in the meantime there is always work to do. For the last couple of days I have taken up residence in the lazarette, gaining access to the underside of the cockpit to try and figure out the control line runs for the Cape Horn wind vane.

By the way, as good as the reviews the Cape Horn system garners, the installation has had its bumps. What one gets in the kit is less than half of the pieces actually needed to make this thing work. Sure the missing bits are small; turning blocks, fair leads, clutches, the actual control line itself. Spot sourcing them once the project is started makes sense since the amount needed of each of these things is dependent on the actual installation; and you get to make that up as you go. But somehow I didn't quite get that when reviewing the order list against the installation manual; and we have added several hundreds of dollars to the price by getting the rest of the needed items. Something to keep in mind if you need to put one of these things in your cruising budget. Not Cape Horn's fault at all, just sharing what happened to us. But trust me on this, doing a hot section on a turbo prop engine is a far sight easier than putting this thing in a 30 year old boat. If you can't do it yourself expect the labor bill to add 50% to 100% to the installed cost.

None of which is easing my transition into the cruising life any. I can't get a truck here on time. The bottom took 3 weeks instead of 4 days, the wind vane isn't wind-ing or vane-ing anything yet, the list of work still to do is daunting and I'm sure I don't know what all needs done yet.

I guess if this was easy everyone would be doing it.




1 comment:

Pau Shard said...

Good luck getting all your projects done! As you say, if it was easier...

And thanks for passing on windtraveler' post

Fair Winds

Paul Shard
SV Distant Shores II
www.distantshores.ca