We awoke this morning stiff and sore from yesterday’s whirlwind of work on the boat. Fortunately, we had an Orson workout this morning and we told him we just needed to STRETCH.
At 9am Jerrod calls from Harbor Chandlery. They’ve got the chain ready for delivery, but wants to know if we have a dock cart. Melissa reminds him that there are no dock carts on dock S. We might be able to get one but its either a 30 minute walk all the way around the harbor to the office or we send the dingy over to get it. He says never mind, they will figure it out.
Melissa turns to Dave and suggests that maybe we go get a dock cart anyway. Dave cruises over. On the way back with the cart, he is stopped by the Harbor Police wanting to know if he was authorized to have the cart. Yep, the office gave it to me he tells them. Dave gets back but somehow manages to twist his knee in the process. He’s in agony. Melissa grabs a bag of ice and Dave plops into a chair.
Melissa calls Jerrod back to let him know we have a cart. He says he is parking next to the marina office. Melissa reminds him that S dock isn’t there. Its over on the other side near the ferry. Good thing you called he says. But no need for the cart because they are bringing the chain in a bucket and hand cart.
They bring the cart down, and along the way one of the hand cart wheels bends at a precarious angle. Yep. Chain is heavy. We lay the chain out on the dock in 50’ lines so that we can mark it. We pile the old chain back into the dock cart as we are not sure the hand truck with its bent wheel is a smart idea at this point. We head back up the dock. Both the guys from the Chandlery are pushing the cart up the ramp. Another random boater jumps in to push and we get back up onto the upper dock. Fortunately random boater knows the secret – you can bring a van down the ramp onto the dock if you just ask nicely. Oh, that’s sooo much easier than pushing the cart all the way back up the ferry dock ramp!
On the way back to the boat, Melissa stops to chat with random boat guy to say thanks again. He asks if she is on the 5788. She says, not exactly. Its now a 62’ not 57’ boat due to extensive modifications. She realized he is on a Meridian – a sister ship to ours. She invites him for a tour. He was utterly blown away by the customizations. Fun.
Melissa bought plastic chain markers we thought we might try. She attempts to install them, but they keep falling out. Later she realizes she was installing them 90 degrees out of phase. Ooops. She went to the fall back of putting in zip ties every 50 feet instead.
Meanwhile we went to install the anchor roller only to find the fit is way too tight and the anchor roller doesn’t roll. That’s why the old one got so damaged. We’ve played this game before. Dave asks Melissa to go procure a threaded rod, two nuts, and two washers. Ah. Another homemade tool. Here’s what you do – put the rod through the hole that the anchor roller goes into. You put a washer, both nuts, and the second washer on the rod, then feed the rod through the other hole. Screw the nuts down so the washers are pressing against the insides of the anchor pulpit (the channel the anchor runs in). Then just keep turning the nuts bending the sides of the pulpit outward. You have to bend them a bit further than actually needed as they will spring back a bit. But by doing this you can make enough additional room in the channel for the anchor roller to spin freely.
It works best if you have two people for this job as holding everything together and not dropping stuff overboard is a bit of a challenge. Jim and Melissa managed it no problem. Dave was going to do it but Melissa didn’t want him down on the deck with his sore knee.
Now it was time to install the new rode and chain. Jim gets the rope aboard and he and Dave thread it through the windlass and tie it off in the anchor locker. They start to wind up the rope, and realize that… Ooops…. Jim tossed the rope over the bow. That’s not gonna work. That’s a hat-reversing moment right there (demotion from mate to swab). They pull the rope back out of the locker, unwind it from the bow and try again.
At this point, they wind the rope and chain back aboard. Melissa is on the dock making sure that the chain goes over into the water smoothly, and doesn’t catch on the dock water spigot. When she gets near the end, we reverse positions. The guys grab the ropes tied to the anchor and carefully get it over the edge of the dock and into the water. We wanted to keep the ropes on it to ensure it doesn’t swing into the boat and smash a hole in the side. At this point a guy two boats down starts yelling at us telling us we are doing it wrong. We need to reel in more chain. Um no, we don’t. As that is exactly what will make the anchor want to swing into the boat. Melissa yells back “we got this”. Because yeah, random dude who hasn’t been thinking about this for two days, and can’t see the full situation, yelling instructions as we are at the most critical point in this whole thing is just what we need. Sheesh.
With the anchor back aboard, Melissa has Dave take one last crank on the allen wrench to make sure the anchor swivel is nice and tight.
All that’s left is the cleanup. The decks were a muddy mess. Took Dave about an hour of hosing and scrubbing to get her all clean again.
Jim went for a walk and found a Thai massage place with openings. He grabbed a massage and scheduled one for Melissa. They were fabulous. Lots of aches and pains now gone. Better even than the Orson workout this morning.
By the time Melissa returned from her massage, Jim had dinner all cooked up. Pulled pork tacos. Yumo.