When a little bad news is pretty good news.

With heat indexes in the 110+ range, two days of thunderstorms in the forecast, short on sleep and even shorter of temper, (that would be just me, by the way) a slight change in plans seemed appropriate. So this afternoon we moved First Light off the free dock and back down the river a couple of hundred yards into a transient slip at the Ocean Yacht Marina. There I made my second successful back-into-the-slip landing. The first order of business after setting lines and fenders was getting the AC running. It took a while as, once again, the inlet was blocked. Not jellyfish this time. Seriously stinky mud that had to come from the Swamp was the culprit. With the aft engine room hatch open to facilitate that repair, Deb noticed a trail of salt water from the aft of the boat down into the port side shaft seal pocket. An observation that did nothing to lengthen my aforementioned short temper. One problem at a time please. Let's get the AC running, then figure out if the boat is sinking. Deb then had a short wrestle since the AC strainer leaked the first time we cranked up the pump. With the strainer leak fixed, the AC went to work on the hot, muggy air in the boat. We went to work tracing down the leak around the shaft seal.

The water under the shaft seal appeared to have its headwater around the starboard side rudder post. I dried it off and watched while Deb worked the rudders stop to stop. No more water. We went about cleaning everything up, finishing about the time the diver showed. We explained the bump and the vibration. My thought was that a) the rudder took a jolt that unseated its shaft seal for a bit, allowing a good squirt of water ingress and b) the jolt also left us with a bent prop tip. All just a guess of course, but that seemed the most likely explanation for what we had felt during and after the event. And, as it turned out, that is exactly what the diver found. No damage to the rudder and a bent prop tip. A little bit of bad news that is pretty good news.

The diver offered that he knew a guy that could pull the prop, have it repaired, and put it back on without lifting the boat out of the water. The whole process would take “just a couple of days”. Not saying that I didn't believe that but, well, I didn't. The boat is not hurt. A slightly bent prop tip isn't going to do much except save us some gas by having us slow down. The boat is already scheduled to come out of the water for the winter around Oct 1st. So we intend to drive on. But first I'm going to catch up on sleep, food, and music playing while waiting out a couple of days of storms.

A sense of the now ...

A new propeller is a thing of beauty, all shiny and bronze and gleaming in the sun. Sadly most of its days will be spent languishing in unfriendly waters where creatures of various tenacities will seek a permanent home on its carefully constructed curves. So I admired it for a minute, hanging fresh and ready to go to work under Kintala’s keel, then squirted four coats of dull, grey, zinc primer over it. Still, it looks better than the old one did. I also added a couple of zincs to the prop shaft. The prop we bought is reported to be “micro balanced”. Nice, but it seems to me to be mostly propaganda. Oh I’m sure it is finely tuned to run true at the factory, but with two heavy zincs attached to the same shaft melting away at an uneven pace, it seems “micro balanced” is not going to last very long, or mean very much to an actual boat working its way through the ocean.

I wonder if all cruisers develop this sensitivity to our society’s constant barrage of half-truths and spin? Being away from the relentless advertising of TV and radio, content to sit on the porch sipping an Irish coffee and watching the sun set as the evening’s entertainment, true things, (or at least accurate things) form the basics of our decisions making now. What is the weather really going to do? Not TWC’s breathless, bubble-headed take on every routine change in the atmosphere. Which way is the current running this morning, how much do peaches cost at the next reachable store?

One of the things I liked about being a pilot was how much of my life was concentrated on “the now”. Pilots, when they are doing pilot things, are focused on the immediate. So are motorcycle riders (the faster one goes the more one is focused), SCUBA divers, and rock climbers. All things I have enjoyed.  Land lubbers tend to dwell in their imaginations; whatever is going on around them is secondary to what is going on in their head. They text while driving, think about work while walking down the street, spend their evenings living in the make believe world of “reality TV”.

This new cruiser’s life is living close to the now. The task at hand, the weather, the water, the balance of the boat and the world forward of the bow; these are my normal points of focus. What is happening all around sets the tone and determines the next decision.

Our original plan was to splash as soon as the prop was installed. But part of living in the now is that plans become very tenuous things. They are wisps of possibilities more than actual intentions, shredded by the slightest breeze of what is actually happening. In this case the “breeze” was watching the boats in relation to the docks, moving three feet up and down several times over the course of the day. (I am still getting used to the fact that, in this part of the world, docks do not float.) Glassing the transfer tube while working from a dinghy would be messy and uncomfortable at best, and maybe near impossible. Tides are a real thing that must be taken into account, so we decided to finish the steering vane install on the stands instead. Splashing will wait another day, or two.

It depends on the now.