Leaks

We had about an inch of rain on Thanksgiving. I’ve discovered a few leaks in the cabin top as a result. One is through a screw hole that is missing a screw. It’s supposed to be holding down the starboard hatch slide.

Another leak is coming down a bolt for the starboard cabin top rail. Here’s the photographic evidence:

This next photo is pretty blurry, but it’s supposed to show the water that is still under the cabin rails. This is after several hours in the sun. See the shiny water?

So it looks like I need to remove the cabin rails and the hatch slides and find something to seal the screw and bolt holes. Is there special marine caulk for this? Suggestions welcome in Comments.

Day after Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Today I got ready to store the sails by giving each of them a few hours to hang in the sunshine. I tossed a couple of lines over two tree branches and voila! It was a beautiful, breezy day – perfect for drying sails:

Next, I took a look at the clogged cockpit drain. It had been clear since I purchased Dragonfly that something was clogging one of the drains, but I couldn’t see what it was. Now that she is out of the water it was easy to see that barnacles were the culprit. In these pictures, you can see how the rainwater is not draining from the cockpit and the barnacles that were responsible.




I used an awl and a wire coat hanger to scrape out the drain. It was pretty easy.

Fall cleaning

I spent last weekend taking all the boat junk out of the boat. Sails, anchor, lines, cushions, PFDs, etc. I put everything in the sun for a few hours before storing the majority on some plastic shelves on the back porch.

While the boat junk was getting the UV radiation treatment, I was below with a sponge and a pan of water and bleach. The battle against mildew has commenced! I stared in the bow and worked my way back towards the cockpit. I wiped as far as I could reach without actually crawling behind the ladder, which means I didn’t really finish but I was tired of all the contortions.

So now the forward cabin looks like this:

There’s a boat in our yard!

I got home from work on Monday and there was Dragonfly, sitting on her new boatstands in the side yard. Cool!

I had her bottom power-washed as part of the haulout service. That takes care of the algae and loose paint but not the barnacles. The hauler said to wait a few weeks and then I can scrape them right off.

Dragonfly was already in the water when I bought her so this is the first chance I’ve had to see her hull. I was very relieved not to find any unpleasant surprises, like a big crack in the keel! The rudder is all there too.

It’s been raining here all week but I’m hoping it will clear up this weekend so I can clean out the cabin. More pictures to come!

Last sail of 2006

The boat is getting hauled sometime this week. Yesterday, Brian helped me sail her from the beach to a mooring in the Barrington River. From there, King Marine is going to unstep the mast, put her on a trailer and bring her to my yard.

The voyage started out on a frustrating note: we couldn’t get the motor to run for any length of time. It would crank and it would race at high rpm, but it wouldn’t idle. Eventually, it wouldn’t even fire. Brian suspects we may have fouled the sparkplugs with all those start attempts. So that another winter project….

However, since the breeze was steady from the south we decided to try sailing up the river. We headed well out into the bay before tacking around to clear Rumstick Point. From there, we commenced our slow run up the river. At times the wind was dead astern and we sailed “wing-and-wing” with the jib and mainsail on opposite sides of the boat.

People have always warned me that the Barrington River is tricky, with strong currents and a twisty channel. But several things were in our favor. First, the southerly breeze pushed us right up the river. Second, it was almost exactly high tide, which meant that there wasn’t much current. Finally, it is late in the season and there was very little traffic. We had one small fishing skiff following us and passed one large powerboat going the other way. That was it.

We grabbed the mooring on the first try, then set to stowing the sails and the boom. All in all, it was a great day and I felt quite a sense of accomplishment for successfully sailing up the river.

Next up: pictures of Dragonfly high n’ dry in the side yard!

Big storm – October 2006

Rhode Island got hit will a ton of wind and rain on Saturday, October 28th. Kellan and I were driving around to various music lessons that day and we encountered many flooded intersections in Providence and Cranston. Drains on Water St. in Providence were running backwards, with water welling up from the river and flooding the entire street.

A tree came down in our neighbors yard.

At Barrington Beach, the combination of high tide and southerly winds gusting to 60 mph drove the water right over the sand and into the parking lot. When I heard that, I was immediately worried about Dragonfly, as I wasn’t sure if there was enough scope on her mooring line to handle water that deep. Would her bow be dragged under?

The next day I went down to the beach to check. The rain had stopped, but the wind was still blowing. I was very relieved to see Dragonfly bobbing along – not sunk!!

Later, I took the dog for a walk at Colt State Park in Bristol. We saw this boat at the head of Bristol Harbor. Thank goodness this didn’t happen to us!

This guy may have been lucky because he landed on the marsh grass.  There was plenty of footage on the news of boats slamming up against the seawall in Narragansett.  Ouch!

A couple of days later when the winds had died down, I went out to Dragonfly. I couldn’t find any damage. There was about 8 inches of water in the bilge, as opposed to the usual 3 inches. I figured that wasn’t so bad.

Time to get ready for haulout…..