The end of the final donathon – 13 May 2014

So the final day of the delivery/donathon started a bit earlier than i planned. we got a wake up call from aimee calling to check in and confirm my arrival plans. i wanted to go out for coffee and after about an hour of waiting on don to book is flight online we where off.

it was a 1nm hike or so to the city marina but we where rewarded by one of the best breakfasts in a long time. we both got the crab cake Benedict with fresh local crab along with asparagus and tomato and canadian bacon, even gave aimee’s bfasts a run for the money!

it was about 3 times as much food as i am used to and could not even finish the hash browns. we headed back to coconutz and i mentioned to don we needed to get one final work day in. he objected but i was getting paid for this gig so figured i needed to give it my full effort.

we started out with the ignition switch that had fellen off the previous day. don had tried to super glue it with no lock. it did not appear possible to fix it properly but it looked like with enough epoxy we could get the parts attached to the pannel so it looked good and would start the engine. the only problem was it would never be able to be removed but don was selling the boat anyways. alas we had no epoxy but we did have jbweld so i got everything together and held in place with a piece of noodle. the curing time was 6 hours we will have to wait to see if the key still turns when don get back

while i was working on this don went off and did some laundry and when he got back we jumped into our next job. hauling me up the mast to see what the seal with the wind instruments was. we could see the wind speed indicator on the mast spinning but it was facing down, not good. don had a climbing harness so i strapped that on, not a lot better then rope from a comfort perspective. i did my best to help don by pulling myself up the mast. in no time i was up at the top and thing did not look good.

well actually don looked really lucky as the tail of the windex was only about 3 inches above the nav lights which were still intact. unfortunately the wind measurement thing was bent at 90 degrees i made a feeble attempt to bend it back and of course the aluminum tube snapped off. the good news was the wires where still intact and i was able to remove it from the mast. i added some gorilla tape over the connector to protect it and started down.

it took us about 2 hours to rebuild the wind instrument (a 500$ part) we had to shorten the tube by dremelling a slot in the bent part and then cutting about 2 inches out of it. all with 6 wires inside. we used toothpicks inside the tube to protect the wires and had to rotate tube and do about 5 cuts. don did a great job he should be a surgeon in another life. finally we pulled everything together added some tothpicks and a straw to hold things together and finished it off with silicone for waterproofing. i volunteered to go back up the mast and install but don was worn out

we still had the dingy patch job to do and it was 4pm. don dremeled all the other crap out of the 8 inch split seam and i mixed up the two part hypalon glue i had got with scott many moons ago. we actually used dons syring to measure out the 25 to 1 ration and i applied as per the directions. the final step was clamp as securely as possible which we did. cure time on this was 48 hours so we left this in place as well.

by this point it was after happy hour so after my first real shower in two weeks we went straight to rum and cokes. we really wanted to do dinner tonight so we headed over to our crab cake brekfast place. we found a dive next door with a patio serving fried shrip and tater tot’s perfect bar food.

we also ran into two local chicks, well one local chick and another ex local chick who happened to be a Mormon now living in utah moving to st gorge or something. i made friends by talking up all my Mormon contact. the recommended a fish place on the water for dinner and off we went.

it was a VERY GOOD recommendation, we will have to come here with palapa (but not under the bridge). we had the she crab soup, fried oysters and grits and mussles. again we where completely stuffed and had not eaten since bfast. we declared an early victory due to the 430 wake up we needed and headed back to the boat.

As I write this i am sitting in fish tails in the usvi waiting on palapa and aimee and her friend jo to pick me up. it is great to be back home, hopefully we will see don again down here as a visitor if not with his next boat. one thing is for sure it was an epic adventure!!!

cheers
roger