Captain's Log

View pictures in the 2005 Photo Gallery.

March - May 10, 2005:  Honduras

The radio finally arrives in a shipment on March 7th, but very late in the afternoon.  Greg and I pull the new wires and get most of the installation completed that evening.  By net time Tuesday morning we are ready to do a radio check.  We are being heard in Isla Mujeres, Mexico, so we are getting out pretty good.  We do not have the email feature of the SSB radio working yet, but at least we have the radio now.   We finish the rest of the installation and Wednesday morning we are out of the shipyard headed for Barbareta to meet up with Dave and Jan on Odyssea.  We have a nice sail over and have the anchor down at 4:00.  Jan and Dave have been awaiting our arrival and have dinner ready for us that evening.  What a welcome surprise.   

Barbareta is the next island east of Roatan and is privately owned by one individual.  It is a beautiful island with a huge population of yellow-headed parrots.  There are also extremely large orange iguanas that you can see lying on tree limbs soaking up the sun.

On our way to Barbareta, Greg is checking the different systems on the boat because it seems as though we are hearing something in the shaft area of the boat.  Further investigating the shaft it appears as though it is bent.  Greg feels the shaft tube and it is very hot.  Hot enough that you cannot touch it.  The noise is the scrapping of the shaft inside the shaft tube.  La Ceiba Shipyard……we have a problem.  This is only our third trip to and from the islands after the shipyard did all the work on the boat last August and September.

We determined what happened was that when the shaft was reinstalled after the yard replaced our cutlass bearing it was not aligned correctly.  The first trip to Roatan in January was a very nice sail with about 15 knots of wind and very comfortable seas so we did not work the motor to get there.  The trip back to La Ceiba to pick up out new radio was a flat calm day and we had to motor all the way to La Ceiba.  This is when the shaft started rubbing on the inside of the shaft tube and we were not aware of it.  It apparently got very hot and when we arrived at the shipyard the shaft tube filled with cool water as it should and it caused the shaft to warp or bend due to the rapid cool.  We were not aware that this problem was occurring.  After getting the new radio we left the shipyard.  The wind was light that day so we motor sailed to Barbareta.  Since we were using the engine, the shaft was turning and it was bent in the shaft tube and that’s what was causing the rubbing noise and the heat. 

So, we are in Barbareta and our email is not working, but we are there with Odyssea and a catamaran named Skyus.  Skyus has had some problems in the past with their SSB and has the email address for tech support at Raytheon.  They send an email to tech support for us asking what needs to be done to get the email feature working on our new radio.  The next day we get a reply saying that tech support will have to email a large attachment that gives instructions on how to set up the email feature.  Since sailmail will not take attachments we have tech support send it to our landline email address and we will have to wait till we arrive to an Internet location to get the attachment.  

The problem now is that we are still in Barbareta with Odyssea, Skyus has moved on and we still have no email capabilities.  So we cannot email the shipyard about our shaft problem.  We cannot reach the shipyard on their VHF radio because we are too far away and we do not have any cell phone coverage.  We wanted to let Dale know as soon as we can about our shaft problem.

After 10 days anchored at beautiful Barbareta we are headed to Jonesville.  It is Saturday and we want to be in Jonesville to enjoy the Sunday afternoon Bar B Que at Hole in the Wall.    Once at Jonesville we had cell phone coverage so we call Dale at the shipyard and inform him that we think we have a bent shaft and we need to come back to the yard to have it looked at.  This is the week before Easter and it is a short week for most business including the shipyard.  Dale informs us that he can take us in a week, on Monday, March 28th.

We are also able to use the Internet at Woodside Marina and download the attachment from Raytheon.  This information told us how to change the SSB radio from a marine radio to a ham radio, which will give it email capabilities.  YES! We now have our email working. 

The food and friends at Hole in the Wall are great but we need to head to French Cay to re provision before the Easter holiday and we will hang out for the week till it’s time to head back to La Ceiba. 

It’s Monday March 21st and we pull out of Jonesville headed for French Cay and make a new discovery; the autopilot is not working.  “Auto” as we call him is our third crewmember and we depend on “Auto” to make our sailing easier and more enjoyable.  He frees us up so that we can fish or read a book or change sails and just relax.  We will miss him till we can get a new one shipped to the shipyard.

Once in French Cay, Greg and Dave from Odyssea try to troubleshoot the auto pilot failure, but are unable to repair it.  They determine that the course computer is the problem so Greg orders a new one and has it shipped to the La Ceiba Shipyard.  They also take some measurements on the shaft to determine if it is truly bent and unfortunately it really is.     

There are several boats anchored at French Cay and several of the boaters get together for Easter Dinner.  A Texas boat named Dream Catcher with Rosie and Neil aboard host our Easter Dinner aboard their boat.  Baked ham with all the trimmings!  There were eight of us and it was wonderful.  A big thanks to Rosie for the great feast!

It’s time to head back to La Ceiba and the shipyard.  A front is headed our way so the seas are quite confused and the wind is 20 to 25 knots out of the west.  Without “Auto” we have to actually sail the boat by hand.  The good thing is that with all that wind it shortens what is usually an eight hour trip, to a six hour trip and we are at the shipyard. 

The yard has one boat in front of us to be hauled out and then we are hauled out.  Once the boat is blocked under the keel and set on the stands the sling straps are removed and the travel lift is pulled away.  Immediately Greg notices an 18 inch crack in the port stern side of the boat right where the lift strap was located.  The joint in the strap was turned wrong side in and the strap was to far back behind the sling mark and it crush in on the side making a crack.  Fortunately it was only on the outside of the boat and did not crack through the entire thickness of the haul.  The fiberglass crew went to work immediately to repair the crack and another worker started on the shaft removal.

Tuesday the shaft was taken to a machine shop that reported back to Dale that it was OK.  Meaning that it was not bent, which we knew had to be an error, because you could see that it was bent.  Dale ordered that the shaft be taken back to the machine shop and that Greg was to go along to check the measurements.  Once at the same machine shop the shaft was put on the lathe and turned.  The same machinist looked at it again and without putting any tools on it said it was OK.  Greg took a straight edge and showed them that it was not straight and that it was bent, but the shop did not have any tools to measure the amount of the bent.  So the worker and Greg went to another shop, one that Greg had used before and the machinist there put it on the lathe and measured it to determine that it was eight thousands out, meaning that it was bent. 

Once back at the shipyard, Dale told us he would put the shaft in and align the shaft tube correctly and try the bent shaft to see if it would work.  We were apposed to this, but said we would try, so the shaft went back in.  The tolerance for out shaft is only four thousands, half of the amount the shaft was bent.

Meanwhile the fiberglass crew was still working on the haul to repair the crack and we have also brought it to Dale’s attention that the paint that was put on in September was coming off in a couple of places.  He said he would touch them up when they painted the spot where the fiberglass was being repaired.  This did not make us happy because we did not want a patchy bottom paint, so we decided to have the yard put two more coats of bottom paint on the entire haul.  Dale did not have any spare workers at the time to sand or paint the bottom, so Greg and I decided to do it ourselves.  We had time because the workers were still working to align the shaft properly.  Greg had the sanding completed in about five hours and the next day, Thursday, we put the first coat on in the morning and the second in the afternoon.  Friday morning the workers moved the stands so that we could paint underneath them.  Then they were going to put us in the slings by 10:00 AM so we could paint the bottom of the keel and have it dry and ready to go in the water Friday afternoon.  The lift operator and his crew were making adjustments to the sling straps and were not able to get us in the slings till 1:00 PM which would make it hard to get the two coats of paint on and dried so that we could be put back in the water before 4:00 PM when the yard shut down for the day.