Bell, book, and candle

We are rolling up to the 12-week mark in the shipyard, also the 11-week mark of being off the boat. We've been in our current AirBnB for three weeks now and have just over a week to the end of our lease. It is looking, with increasing likelihood, like we will need to extend by at least a few days, if not another entire week.

At one point in the project these three items appeared together and it called to mind today's post title. The ship's bell, my project notebook, and the anchor light.

I last posted here just before the July 4th holiday and I wrote that the yard was off Monday but working Tuesday. It turns out they were actually off both days, and we had a four-day weekend. Well, sort of. The yard was off, but the painting contractor was working, and apparently Sunday night they sprayed the gunwales and bulwarks. When I showed up to check on things Monday morning, I had to make an about face, because the paint was still tacky, and with overspray covering the decks I could not even board the boat.

Paint on the gunwales. It was still wet and I could not board, so I clamber up to the top of the Admiral Richard E. Bennis ferry to snap this photo.

Tuesday I was able to re-board and I had the whole yard to myself. I got a few things done before the eeriness of the whole thing sent me home to enjoy what was left of the holiday. It looked for a while like the evening concert and fireworks might be rained out, but by mid-afternoon the forecast had cleared. I dodged what was left of the rain on my scooter to ride up to Dick's Sporting Goods in White Plains to pick up a couple of those outdoor chair-in-a-bag contraptions for the show; our last pair had disintegrated from salt air down in the tiller flat.

July 4th orchestra concert on the lawn.

In the evening we took the scooters down to the customer parking at the yard, had dinner next door at the diner, and then strolled over to the park for the festivities. The Fireman's Carnival was still in full swing, and  on the other side of the park a large portable bandshell had been erected for the symphony concert. The local St. Thomas Orchestra was tuning up just as we arrived and set up our chairs.

The unavoidable gratuitous fireworks photos.

The two best out of dozens.

They were actually pretty good, and played the usual set of standards from Sousa, Bernstein, Copland, and Ellington. There was a piece by a local composer written for Harbor Island Park specifically, and the concert finished with the usual Tchaikovsky (and why we celebrate American independence with a piece about Russia defending itself from France is beyond me). It was perhaps fitting that the fireworks display from the next town over started during this piece and overwhelmed whatever was supposed to stand in for cannon fire.

New Starlink mount. I had to ream the end out of this Schedule 80 (it just fits in Schedule 40), then "machine" the retaining lip with my Dremel, and add the bolt and acorn nut to prevent rotation. Pictures of the finished result once it's mounted.

Shortly after the climactic finish, Mamaroneck's own fireworks display commenced out over the bay. We moved our chairs a little closer to the exit and had a nice view. Not the most spectacular show we've seen. but impressive and enjoyable nonetheless. This was the first time in a decade wherein I did not need to consult the Local Notices to Mariners to learn where and when the security zones would be established out on the water.

With Martin and Steph at the Larchmont Yacht Club.

The following weekend we had a nice visit from our friends Stephanie and Martin from St. Pete. Now boatless themselves, they helped some friends move a boat from Lake Ontario down to Jersey City, where they rented a car to drive to Boston. They were a day early into NJ and so we had a full day with them, having dinner on Friday, then going for a nice drive Saturday, stopping for lunch at Bistro V in Greenwich, CT by way of Home Depot, where I needed a few things. We ended up Saturday evening at the Larchmont Yacht Club for dinner; it's a very nice club, and they have a few moorings in water deep enough for Vector. Yacht clubs here have long and storied histories.

The chrome had become pitted on the bell, exposing the brass, which then corroded to verdigris.

An acid bath and elbow grease is what it took to remove the corrosion. The mount, clapper, and hardware all got the same treatment. It will come back, but I used some auto polish to stave it off.

I'd love to say we did something equally enjoyable last weekend, too, but instead we got our second dose of shingles vaccine Saturday morning, and I tried to catch my breath from the endless days at the shipyard. We did take a break to see the latest Indiana Jones movie, which was enjoyable if a bit long. It was our first time back in a cinema since before the start of the pandemic. Theater seating even in these smaller houses is nowadays quite spacious and comfortable, if a bit spendy. A good way to spend the afternoon after our shots and a nice brunch. The vaccine had us down for the count the rest of the weekend, so it was just as well that the tiki festival in the park was more or less rained out, and it also rained the whole day Sunday. I was still recovering Monday and made little progress at the yard.

There was serious corrosion around the edges of this gate. It had to be welded and then ground back down.

We've added just a few eateries to our list: The Roasters is a yuppie coffee/breakfast/lunch place that had some nice outside seating but was not worth a repeat visit (by contrast, we've been to both the Diner and the Village Luncheonette more than once for brunch). And we had our first Smashburger experience after learning they had beer; our visit reminded us that this sort of fast food counter experience, just a peg or two above McDonalds, is not really our thing. 

Refurbished spotlight, masthead light, and mount, along with the new masthead pigtail.

This anchor light was previously screwed directly to the mast top, with a splice halfway down the mast. This junction box, painted white to match the mast, will relocate the splice and also provide for wiring a new mast-top camera without drilling another hole in the mast.

Last night, when the forecast called for rain all evening, I picked up a deli sandwich from Cosmo & Alex Pisano, a deli/bodega that does a brisk business and was quite good. The rain, which also postponed the scheduled jazz flute music in the park to tonight, never materialized. Lastly, we walked up to Osteria Padre Pio a few nights ago, a bit of a hike but also very good.

They started sanding these doors with the windows still in and the dogs still installed. I stopped them so I could take it all off. I contacted the manufacturer about replacing the gasket (I can just see them destroying it with the sanders) and they told me the door was not made to be disassembled. Yeah, watch me.

On the project front, I knocked out quite a few things in the past couple of weeks:

• Finished the gaskets, cleaned up the base, and re-assembled the Kahlenberg horns.
• Removed the tiller cover, and sanded it to a smooth bare aluminum finish after the yard ran it past the sandblaster for me.
• Evaluated samples and ordered new latches for the boarding gates.
• Made a new permanent mount for the Starlink terminal from a length of Schedule 80 PVC
• Refurbished the anchor light and mounted it to a new mast-top junction box to facilitate connections.
• Refurbished the ship's bell
• Removed the windows and dogs from the pilothouse doors
• Refurbished locker hinges and latches
• Inventoried all the fasteners that need to be replaced

Just part of the list of 316 stainless fasteners I need to replace. Not included are all the parts where I determined the fasteners could be re-used.

This is the motor cover for the davit crane, which was previously white like the rest of the crane. We're leaving the crane boom bare aluminum so I rattle-canned this to somewhat match.

The yard also took care of a few things, most of which required my input

• Cut out the larger "nostril" to port of the anchor roller and welded stainless rod to the opening
• Removed a hawsepipe that had been stuck to the bulwark and polished it after it had been accidentally sandblasted
• Removed the sounding port openings from the wing tanks, which the painters had accidentally sanded until there was almost no chrome left on the brass. These will need to be replaced at the painter's expense.
• Refurbished the anchor roller.
• Removed the bushings from the boarding gate hinges to match them up for replacement.
• Finished painting the mast, steps, and overhead panels.
• Repaired the rust damage on the aft starboard boarding gate.

One of the yard's master welders working on enlarging the bow opening.

The end result, with a 3/4" stainless rod surrounding the opening. The inevitable wear of lines would take any paint off, leaving bare steel. The anchor opening to the right is also surrounded in stainless for the same reason, but it has already been painted.

As usual I spent a lot of time walking around the boat and catching issues before they became worse, such as the aforementioned sounding port issue. Even though they have now had to fix quite a few of these, the painters also keep covering important holes with fairing compound, which they then need to sand off and re-apply after finding the wayward holes. It's been hot in the shop and hotter in the boat, so everything is moving just a little bit slower.

Music in the park a few nights ago was Broadway show tunes. We are close enough to Broadway here that all the performers on stage played leads in multiple Broadway productions, and they were very good.

First coat is on for the boot stripe. Forward (to the left in this photo) of the half-pipe was rolled and from the end of the half-pipe aft was sprayed. You can see the transition line and the difference in texture. This will all get sanded and final coat will be sprayed.

Louise, in the meantime, has been dealing with replacing all the deck furnishings we opted to discard upon our arrival, including all the fenders, the lines, and the aft deck furniture. She's been locked in battle with an Amazon seller for a week, after receiving a pair of sling chairs that were advertised as stackable (a non-negotiable requirement) but turned out to be anything but, a determination only made after spending fifteen minutes assembling one IKEA-style. The seller is convinced that if they just give us a big enough discount, we will keep them. Of course, she continues to crank out quilts at a prodigious rate -- ten since last I posted.

With punches in hand I was able to finish the horn gaskets.

Horns cleaned up and re-assembled. I later painted the couple of nicks in the paint on the base.

Finish paint is starting to go on, and I am hopeful that we can have most of the topsides paint done by the end of next weekend. I told the yard we'd move aboard as soon as they tug us out of the paint shed; we'll figure out how to plumb our gray water someplace until they can splash us. But it would be very tight to be back aboard before our reservation here runs out, so we will extend, the only question being for how long.

The anchor roller is a tad small for the boat and we are constantly mangling it. After they bent it back into shape and made new, better axles for it, they hit it all with the buffer and some rouge...

... and it has never been this shiny since we've owned it. Here it is all back together with fresh rollers.

It is my sincere hope that the next time you hear from me here, we will be back aboard, if not actually back in the water. This has been our longest period off the boat since our first refit exactly a decade ago, and we sorely miss our own home.

One more just for fun. Long-time readers know that our bus, in which we lived for a decade before moving aboard Vector, was named Odyssey, whence came the name of the blog. (Text balloon source unknown.)