Our Adventure Delayed

As I wrote in my June 15^th post we were waiting for a new battery/charger inverter we had ordered from Canada. It did arrive on schedule and Captain John was able to install; we breathed a sigh of relief after testing revealed it worked.  We have had so many unanticipated “challenges” that it felt like we had received a great gift. 

 

Our original UW target date was June 1 or thereabouts. It is now July 10th and we are still on our “pre-journey”.  I think pre-journey is a good way to think about this adventure as you can’t expect to just pull a boat out of winter storage, launch and go. Planning for such an adventure certainly requires getting the boat in tip top shape! It certainly boggles the mind though when things that ran perfectly at the end of last season become problems this year. 

 

Despite the challenges we are fortunate they happened while in our home-port of Westport, MA where we can get them taken care of prior to our trip. (That’s what we keep telling ourselves as we face delay after delay). No worries, we are still smiling! 

 

Slàinte Mhath was taken out of the shed and launched on June 20^th.  It's always a glorious day when we finally get out of the dark, damp shed and into the water. 

Once she was launched we spent some time putting up the bimini and troubleshooting a newly installed raw water pump before heading to a temporary dock space where we expected to be for a couple of days. The following days continued to be busy as John found a lot more to do including changing out old hoses and clamps, changing oil and replacing filters, cleaning up and painting the engine room and performing regular maintenance on the generator; all this while while we waited to coordinate a day with Neil from NautiNav (who installed our new Garmin system) to perform the calibration necessary to sync the boat with the new electronics. We decided a good place to run the calibration would be in the New Bedford Harbor. We have a mooring on the back bay in Fairhaven so we planned on having Neil meet us there, run the calibration and then fuel up at Sea Fuels in New Bedford. 

So on July 2nd we headed to NB; this turned out to be a pretty awful trip. Getting out of Westport Harbor is often difficult and this day was particularly snarly with a bit of wind, choppy seas and fog. To top it off steering was a problem; John would turn the wheel one way and the rudder indicator would show the boat was turning in the opposite direction. We managed to get out beyond Gooseberry Island only to be met by a torrential rain storm which obstructed visibility! What seemed like forever, we finally arrived in New Bedford Harbor and made our way through the bridge to the back bay where we hooked up to our mooring. 

Our calibration was then scheduled for July 5th.  John picked up Neil and Scott in the dingy and the calibration was done. This required us to run the length of NB Harbor for a specific time at a specific speed. Once completed we fueled up at Sea Fuels located at the fishing docks in NB. People like to go there for the cheaper prices! We paid $3.24 per gallon for diesel and took on 400 gallons. We dropped Neil and Scott of at the Popes Island Marina then grabbed our mooring so John could do some work on the dinghy engine which hadn’t been touched since last year. He changed the spark plugs and fuel water separator and was happy when the engine started on the first pull and purred. 

Due to weather conditions, the July 4th NB fireworks had been cancelled and rescheduled for July 5th. Since we were already in NB we decided to spend the night on the mooring and head back to Westport the next morning. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate; once again the fog rolled in with a vengeance, obliterating what was probably a very expensive light show from view.

We caught the 7:00a.m bridge opening on July 6th on what started out as a bright day.  We soon discovered that Mother Nature had other ideas in mind; fog again all the way to Westport. Day 1 with our new radar and it was worth its weight in gold.

Upon arriving in Westport we docked the boat at the temporary space we had been given. While looking at the chart plotter John noticed the boats that were visible on the chart due to their AIS location. We soon discovered our boat was not  being seen and determined there was some glitch with the AIS transmission. On Friday July 7th Neil was able to rectify the issue. In the process it was determined our radio was not working properly, a blown speaker being the culprit. We had a couple of options and chose to order a new radio which we hope will arrive on Wednesday, July 12th. Once it arrives installation “should” be quick and we should be able to shove off on Thursday, July 13th. What’s a few more days? 

We knew we had until Saturday on the dock as the folks who have rented the space for the year were due to arrive. We took advantage of the rest of Friday and Saturday morning to load up some provisions including our Lectric bikes before moving onto a mooring where we now sit.