Sunday, October 18, 2009

Trying to escape Pt McNeill's evil grasp

Skype ROCKS! These are screen grabs from Skype sessions.
We got to call Peter and Laura, and Chris and Rita. Anchorage and Wash DC, respectively. They were cool and have webcams. Sooo 2006, but we're jealous. Our contact name is blain.n.monique.anderson. Get Skype and look us up.
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Then on to the news.

We've been fixing and upgrading boat stuff for a week in Pt. McNeill. Soon after, a major storm blew in and had us stuck. The inital repairs were good: new propane sensor, voltmeter, three new batteries, oil and transmission fluid change, etc.
And then we got to the steering system.
An aged hydraulic system that's starting to be leaky. We bled the lines and added a gallon of fluid. The process is a real exercize in patting your head and rubbing your stomach, except we have to coordinate it in separate parts of the boat.

This is where the inside steering unit is. Having three of these on the boat is not all that wonderful. But we wanted the inside steering. We thought.

We felt we had it filled and all was good, but we took off on a shakedown cruise and turned back. The steering was all over the place and we weren't going to get anywhere. So we tried to bleed the system again yesterday with no luck. Today (I'm writing this at 4:30am) we'll try again. Mo has let me know she's about had it with boat repairs for a while, so it had better work.


More later

2 comments:

  1. Good to hear you haven't lost your sense of humor. Hope the hydraulics are working better by now. Stay dry!
    Tried to snow in ANC this morning, but all melted as it hit the ground and melted some off hillside this afternoon when temps reached mid 30's. Maybe by this weekend for Halloween? Still time for one more paddle! Jack M

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  2. Hi Jack - welcome! There's always time for one more freezeree. Stay warm out there.

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