To do this story justice, we need to go back 24 hours to Friday, yesterday, morning. I had a relatively short list of "TO DO's" on my daily list: stow boat for autopilot sea trial, study, study, study for Ham test Saturday, pick-up present and food from restaurant for Aunt Rox's B-Day Celebration in the evening.
We all woke early to greet the day with great enthusiasim and positive energy! Craig spent a long day on Thursday finishing our engine maintenance, and removing our old Robertson Auto Pilot, and installing our brand new brain, the Furuno. At 8pm Thursday night, he completed the "at dock" portion of the autopilot programming. He stayed up late reviewing all the steps necessary for our "sea trial" phase of programming where we take the boat out to the ocean and it "learns" how the boat steers.
Friday AM we were ready for just that. After walking the dog, I set about to tidy the boat (Ha!) or at least get things stowed so that no one would get impaled or we wouldn't lose valuable equipment. This minor project included re-bedding our galley cabinetry atop our engine compartment after the maintenance was completed. I had it off for two days and was more than ready to have our galley back to normal. After an hour or so, the boat was ready to go out for the test. Craig came back from The Captain's Breakfast Table (or old sailor's coffee clutch as I call it) and was upset about a neighbor getting involved in a business discussion which was not his affair to be involved with. Craig takes great pride in what he does, and not feeling good about leaving the discussion the way he did, he went back to have a further, calmer dialogue with the neighbor. Meanwhile, it is now about 10am. I decide to go online and check mail as I am waiting for two boat insurance quotes. Yippee! I get one... Seems a little high priced. Oops. I got dyslexic with the value of our boat to the tune of several thousand dollars. No message from our current insurance agency who seems to be dragging their heals. Craig is back. He talked at length with the neighbor in an effort to communicate rationally, and is feeling like he's beating his head against a brick wall and wasted valuable time. Our earlier optimisim for the day has taken a good hit, but we are going to rally for the sea trial! Craig goes to get a glass of water from our galley and no pressure water. We check and our 30+ year old pressure water pump and it has in fact given up the ghost... Put that on the list for tomorrow...
Our Universal Diesel Engine, "Goldie" starts right up and away we go to sea trial! Our new Furuno is a dream! "Doc" as we have named her, is a super star! She is steering the boat better than either one of us ever could! The only negative is that she is not yet hooked-up to our speed indicator and has a rather annoying alarm that sounds whenever she can't tell what speed the boat is traveling, which is quite often. Put "Call Furuno" on my list for tomorrow.
Back in the slip Craig noticed some smoke coming from the engine and took a look. Bad news again. There was coolant leaking from the engine, and we couldn't initially tell where it was coming from. Time to take off the galley cabinet... again! Craig was panicking and thinking it was the engine block which would be a HUGE fix, but as luck would have it, it was our heat exchanger that had been rubbing against a bolt and warn through. Starving at 2pm, we took a break and ran up to Carrows to grab a quick lunch. Craig decided not to attempt the Ham test as he had not had a minute to study in days and had to work on our client's vessel on Saturday. I will go alone for team South Trail, and am starting to feel the pressure! Craig took our leaky heat exchanger it to our neighbor Travis at the Ventura Boat Yard and got the hole welded while he waited, and then spent time putting a fiberglass patch over the weld and painting the whole thing. Meanwhile, I managed a whole 2 hours of uninteruppted study which only served to show me how totally unprepared I was for this test in the morning. Ahhhh!!!
No time to worry now, I ran out to pick-up a b-day gift, stop by the post office, and then swing by to grab Craig and Dover to go to pick-up BBQ and get to the B-Day party. It was a nice event, and when we finally got home to our boat last night at 8:45pm I started to study. I studyed most of the night. I took a little nap and a shower (in the public showers... no pressure water!), and DRUM ROLL PLEASE... at 8:15am this morning I passed my Ham test!!! I am now a Technician Class Amatuer Operator and in about a week I will check the FCC database online, and have a call sign assigned to my name which will be mine for the next 10 years. I'm at the lowest level and don't get to talk legally on hardly any radio bands, but it sure feels good to have it! Craig is proud, I'm proud, and now back to that never ending list of THINGS TO DO TODAY! Only 15 days 'til departure!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment