Shake down cruise and fishing trip

The second fishing trip was not quite as good as the first; however, we did not get skunked!

As you may see, with a magnifying glass, the catch was as long as the bait.  Our mate for the day, and my buddy, Bob Pino said "snagging counts!"

Spring is here

Spring has arrived so Lea and I are almost ready to try another attempt at going for a boat ride.

Lea has been sick for more than a week and I am suffering from broken ribs and beat up side.  It seems Lea's and my excursion to Branson, Missouri was hard on us both.  I broke my ribs doing the dead man's waltz in the bath tub while Lea chose another torment in the form of a bronchial infection for herself.

With my auction coming up next weekend Lea and I haven't done much to ready ourselves for the cruise.

Tony took the Gliding Gander out of the water again to complete some work on the scuppers.  Scott Hyland is returning this week to do some final adjusting to several of the new systems we installed on the Gliding Gander.  Long Cove marina will be doing some final projects and then we hope the boat will be ready to leave around the end of May.

Do to the June arrival of the hurricane season in the Atlantic, we are now planning to turn north toward New York City, then the Hudson River, then the Great Lakes and on down the Illinois River from Chicago to the Mississippi River.  We cannot get to the Gulf before the hurricane season is over in November.  We then plan to enter the antique and classic boat show in Key Largo on December 3, 4, and 5th.  From there we hope to proceed to the Bahamas and then into the Caribbean for the winter.

Last weekend was the opening of the Spring Rock fishing season in the Chesapeake.  Jesse and I took some of our buddies and gave it a try.

Evan caught the first fish of the season at 34" with first mate Eric Liebig to his right.

 

Thomas brought in the second fish at 42".

Dan caught the third at 32" with Jesse looking on.

Bob Pino, fishing consultant and general good guy who worked very hard all day long trying to get a fish on.

If you follow the orange line you may see the orange planer board 100' out toward the Bay Bridge.

Tony Van de Wal passed us while fishing on his boat.  You can now appreciate how rough the water was.  With average seas at 3'-6" to 5"-6" and occasional waves to almost eight feet made for a very difficult day.  Notice the entire cockpit of Tony's boat was below the wave tops.  If you click and enlarge this picture you may see the tops of Tony's fishing rods on the stern of the boat.

Winter is probably behind us by now

Lea and I enjoyed our time in Jamaica.  The weather was, shall we say, better than in Maryland.

As I mentioned in our last post.  The Gliding Gander was left in the charge of the Deckelman family who owns Long Cove Marina in Rock Hall, Maryland.  These people did a wonderful job.  Mort Jr., the eldest son of Mort Sr., opened the inspection plate on the transmission and immediately saw where it had been beaten with a center punch at some point in time.  After investigating further, Mort quickly determined the transmission was defective inside.  Additionally, the V Strut was an inch out of alignment with the shaft on the starboard side.  After rebuilding the brand new V Stut, re-pitching the propellers, replacing the recently machined drive couplings, replacing the transmission, and realigning the engine for about the fourth time, the Gliding Gander shakes no more.  While at Long Cove Marina they also replaced the thermostats, fan belts, tightened down the very loose generator, installed the synchronizer for the engines and installed raw water alarms on the both motors.  Furthermore, they did a lot of things that were either completely missed, not finished, or, not done properly.  

Lea and I got the boat back last Monday.  We ran it to Chestertown last Friday evening for a cocktail cruise with sixteen foxhunters who are our friends.  Sunday morning, we took the boat to Lea's daughter, Este.  Sunday afternoon we took Este, her daughters and some of their friends on a cruise to the head of the Severn River in Annapolis.  During our test runs we developed a list of additional things that need to be done before the Gliding Gander will be completely ready to live aboard.  Unfortunately, we will need to haul the Gliding Gander one more time.  During the next haul-out we will be installing side drains for the scuppers.  Unfortunately, the new scuppers we built into the sides draw water into the boat at mid-speeds.

The previous pictures were the Foxhunters cruise with Master Ed Fry immediately above.

Looking backward from the rear of the flybridge.

Looking backward from the forward part of the cockpit.  Note motor boxes in blue.

Looking backward from mid-flybridge.  Note ladder on left and dinghy with cover on right.

Looking forward from the lower helm station toward the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and a ship.

 Looking forward from upper helm station.

A pair of sailboats approaching the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

Lea with daughter Este and Grandchildren on the stern seat.

Lea playing a game of Scrabble on her smart phone.

Time out

When the ice finally melted the Gliding Gander was moved to Long Cove Marina across the Chester River from Lea's farm.  With Lea being in Jamaica for the last week, and a snow storm predicted in two days, I decided to fly south and join Lea.  While I am away Tony Van de Wal will again take charge of the Gliding Gander and have her fixed for all known, remaining issues.  At this time, it appears the V strut was made improperly and the coupling between the transmission and drive shaft was not properly aligned.  I ordered a new coupling to be installed, the V strut to be rebuilt and hopefully that will resolve the imbalance problem.  While at Long Cove they will install new thermostats, raw water pump alarms, new belts, change fluids and filters.  While the boat is out of the water Tony will raise the water line a little bit and add spray rails to the rear sides of the hull to help stop water from having a chance to come in the scrubbers while underway at mid-range speeds.

Lea and I just received the date of the auction of my farm across the creek from Lea's farm.  The date will be Saturday,  April 24th.  As a result we decided to not leave on our trip until after the auction and until everything I have is moved from my farm property (assuming the farm sells).  I expect we can get underway by the second week of May.  We are now seriously considering doing America's Great Loop before we go to the Bahamas and into the Caribbean.  This could add about three more thousand miles to our original trip.  The greatest consideration in doing the Great Loop now is because we will be coming into the spring and no longer have the need to get ahead of freezing weather.

No matter how it all turns out, Lea and I will have our boat trip.  We just do not know when, or where, or for how long.  As Lea says:  "It is all part of the adventure".

Meanwhile, this Jamaican weather is very easy to get used to.

Frozen in

When they called for bad snow storms we put the Gliding Gander under the roof at Piney Narrows Yacht Haven.  The people are great and have very nice facilities.  The only problem is they cannot "Garontee" the harbor won't freeze up.  As you will see, due to Piney Narrows wonderful bubbler system, no ice builds up under the covered roofs or on the boats.  However, the bubbler system cannot prevent the canals to the individual slips from freezing up.

Ice in the canal leading to the slip but not in the slip.

Gliding Gander's Chesapeake Styling and low freeboard looks very different from those much larger high freeboard yachts.  Nevertheless, at the end of the day, Gander will travel many more miles, to many more ports, in much shallower water, at a much faster speed, for much less than half of the fuel.  However, think Jed Clampett and the Beverly Hillbillies old truck in comparison.

In the background you can see the thick ice built up in the canal leading to the Gander's slip.  In the foreground you might detect the much thinner ice that still blocks the canal.  While Gliding Gander is able to easily cut the ice, that same ice could damage the hulls of other boats if we were to break out and shove that ice into other boats.

A new phase in the restoration project

Enough is enough!  The never ending excuses and accusation have taken their toll. It has been a long, cold and way too expensive of a winter thus far.  It seems no matter what we paid it is never enough.  While moving the boat to Piney Narrows Yacht Haven where the boat could be out of the weather, we found the new port shaft, new motor mounts and recently faced couplings appear drastically out of alignment.  The original contractors rechecked everything and feel the transmission coupling is bent or not aligned.  After getting a second opinion, it was felt the new shaft is most likely bent.  The only way to know for sure is to pull the boat, remove the shaft and couplings, and return them to a prop and shaft shop.  We cannot pull the boat until the ice in the marina melts.  Can anybody tell just when that will happen?  As is, the process would likely have required only about three more trips for the contractor to drive to Kent Island.  Instead, the contractor asked to take the boat to a marina in Rock Hall where I have been asked to not visit.  Obviously, this is not acceptable.  Therefore, several discussions ensued in which the contractor doesn't want to have to drive to Kent Island anymore.  Additionally, the contractor made the contention the hold up, in him getting his work completed, is now my fault for some new, heretofore, untold reason - even though he has been paid for every minute he requested.  He found out the hard way that no one threatens "removing his stuff from my boat today"!  In reality, that will result in him finding out just how quickly he can indeed remove his stuff from my boat.  So ends the finger pointing and arguing for now.  The second chapter to this story will be told when the boat comes back out of the water and is thoroughly checked out.

Thanks to all of the many qualified contractors and marinas along the Chesapeake Bay we already have numerous options to finish the boat elsewhere as soon as the ice melts.  This new turn in our adventure will prove very satisfying to me because we are beholding to, and will be taken advantage of, by no one.

Not exactly like a winter in the Caribbean

Lea whispering sweet nothings in Scott's ear.  You can see he really hates every minute of it.

Anticipating the onslaught of a record snow storm, we rented a covered slip in a nearby marina.  We now will have electricity to heat the boat without having to run the generator like we did for about two weeks.  We will also have a place for Scott to complete his work.

In preparation for the big storm maintence work had to be done on our backhoe/loader.  Scott Hyland dropped by to figure out a charging problem that Bob Harris, So-Deep's Shop Superintendent couldn't determine over the telephone.  All fellow So-Deeper's may feel free to torment Bob about his inability.

When the storm came this was my view from my helm station, thanks to Scott.  But... the snow kept falling!

So we called upon the heavier machine.

However, on the first attempt, getting the Caterpiller D3 out of the barn while the snow was so high caused a small problem with the barn roof.  Thanks to Mr. Bret Ringold we cleared the snow and carefully squeezed out from under the roof.

As Jackie Gleason use to say..... AAAnd  away we go!