Remember the sign at the bar that says "Free Beer Tomorrow"? The point of course is that if you go back tomorrow the sign still says the free beer is tomorrow. Something like the song with lyrics of "tomorrow never comes" - because once tomorrow comes, it is today. All of it is semantics, right? Well, tomorrow really IS the day!! 8 am launch time. In the meantime ...... what we've done.....
As I said, mornings begin at Ziggy's. If it's the weekend, Matt and Wendy join us sometimes. Either way that ended yesterday as Ziggy's will be closed for the next 3 weeks for remodeling ... Sad ....
There was one day of really nice low winds which is great for paddleboarding (Matt) and kayaking (Steve) on the weirdly calm/wavy Neuse River. It's so nice - walk out of the garage door with your toy of choice - then walk several hundred feet and plunk into the water. The wonders of living right on a large waterway.
In the meantime, we've kept in touch with Sailor Dave on Mary Lee. We first met him in Baltimore last September as Steve was recovering from his broken arm - along with Amanzi crew Lance and Mary. We have all since gone our separate ways but we knew that eventually we would meet up with Dave as he returned to Mary Lee a month or so ago with a destination SOUTH!
Oriental, NC was that meeting place. It was so fun driving over the bridge and seeing Mary Lee anchored in the harbor!
We joined Mike and Dave for breakfast as they were on a mission to get as far as they could before Mike needed to head back home. Dave will continue solo.
A trip to the grocery store for supplies and off they went. It was really great to see him again! We will keep in touch as we expect to meet up with him again as we head south also. Hopefully we'll be able to spend a bit more time with him than a couple of hours.
So Steve has carried Aunt Josie's meat grinder on board Yesterday's Dream for the past 3 years. How many times has it been used? NONE. What is the rule? If we haven't used something in the last year - overboard it goes. Trouble is, I was never able to find the doggone thing to get rid of it! Hard to believe on a 36' foot boat isn't it?
The good ending of all of this is he made potato pancakes the other day. What can I say? They were great!!! Good thing I didn't know where he was hiding it :-)
Meanwhile, back to work today. Brad finished the fiberglass yesterday so today's goal was to get the boat ready to put back in the water. The top of the shaft tube was secured .....
Next was to push the shaft in. Sadly I didn't get a picture of how we managed to get this over 9 foot shaft in Wendy's little car. Just a little bit was hanging out of the window ......
More hardware added which completes the connection of the shaft to the transmission. All new hoses, clamps etc.
The alignment to the transmission isn't very good though as only one of four bolts will line up. Part of having the boat in the water is to give the hull time to reshape itself to 'normal'. Sitting on land distorts the hull somewhat but I don't really think it's going to be ok so we'll still have to align the engine and transmission to make sure there is no stress on the connection. We'll have help with this as we've never done it before but next time ....
Last step: installing the propeller. There are two nuts that hold on the prop. One wide nut and one narrow nut. Which to put on first??? Should we listen to the guy at the shaft place - put the wide on on first. Definitely. Or listen to our trawler association members - put the narrow one on first. Definitely.
After extensive research, we went with the narrow nut first. That's how it was on. That's what the neighboring boat has on first. That's what Michigan Props brochure says. We'll do it.
Ready to go into the water tomorrow at 8 am. We'll leave here at 6:40 to make the ferry and get there by a little after 7:30.
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