Potential Logo

Ok, so this is a free logo designer I found on the web. I've contacted an old friend from TCU who does this for a living and can pretty this up, but it's a start. Give me some feedback!

SOS…….SOS Children’s Village that is.

It’s really easy to get caught up in our own problems from financial hardships to failing relationships. Last week I forged a partnership with one of the most amazing groups of people I’ve ever had the privilege of calling my friends. They toil effortlessly for the greater good of children who can’t help themselves.

I know that I will get very bored if I don’t have something to work for on my circumnavigation other than the physical sailing and exploring. I also been feeling the need to start giving back having been very self focused for the past several years. I’ve found corporate success relatively easy, made some money, but the effort seems hollow. It’s time to put some effort into helping others.

I started searching for a multi-national nonprofit that I could join forces with to drive revenue and raise awareness for. The search turned of a long list of respected organization from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to the Red Cross. However, there was only one that really pulled at me. SOS Children’s Villages.

I sent one email to the USA office of SOS and within 24 hours received an overwhelmingly positive response back from them. SOS has operations across the globe and they’ve truly opened their doors to me adding a much needed philanthropic dimension to my plan. The general plan is to sail from Houston ESE around to the south coast of Haiti and the Dominican Republic stopping at the SOS Villages there. I’ll be documenting the visits with pictures, film, and blog. SOS has invited me to stay for several days at each facility allowing me to get to know their individual characters and a chance to bring to life the story of one of the children or the many staff who make the villages possible.

From Haiti I’ll head to Jamaica, Columbia, Panama, and finally Tahiti visiting SOS sites in each country along the way. I don’t know much about public relations or how to use the media to my advantage, but SOS have put their resources in place to take care of press releases and getting the story out. Once I actually sail, they will be using their site as a platform to help track my progress and as a board to post my feeble attempts at telling their stories.

This past Monday morning was spent with the staff of SOS Children’s Village of Florida. I met the kind of people who can easily restore your faith in humanity. I want to tell their story in detail, but think the SOS stories deserve a page of their own either on this blog or on my other home page. To do this effort justice I am looking at a total redesign of the site that will include a donations page for SOS along with blog, photo gallery, and position tracking all in one place. If anyone is good with web development or knows someone who is that works at reasonable rates please point me in their direction.

Check out my new partner! http://www.sos-usa.org/

It’s been a surreal two weeks…

When I was a senior at TCU in Fort Worth, TX there was a pretty tight nit group of graduate students in the Geology department. One or two of which I’ve stayed friends with over the past 10 years. The weekend before last I went up to a reunion they were holding at TCU. I think with one exception they were all married with children. It was great to visit with them and the weekend has really set my mind to thinking. It’s hard not to question ones actions when you see the look on friends and family members faces when I tell them what I am up to.

There is no doubt that the risk that scares me most about the trip is the difficulty of forming and holding onto a relationship. Let’s face it, convincing a sane and supportive female to jump on board a boat with a guy who she has known less that a year is a difficult proposition at best.

Seeing how happy some of my old friends where certainly argues a good case for the four bedroom house with a two car garage and 2.5 kids. I think I am even more afraid though of giving my life to a company whose values and goals are not inline with my own. It seems there are almost as many of my friends who are still asking themselves what they want to be when they grow up. I think I am somewhere in the middle. At least I know who I want to be, the what I want to be will fall into place if I start taking care of myself and doing the things inline with the who part of the question.


Now on to a much dirtier topic of conversation. Do you know what happens to the holding tank on a boat if you pump it one too many times without pumping it out first? I bet you can guess. C’mon, think about it. Yep, it has an overpressure valve that lets the over pressured solid/fluid mix inside weep out a little bit. I don’t care who you are or what head deodorizer you use, it stinks. So, I’ve spend the late afternoon and evening hosing out my forward bilge and wiping everything down with Clorox Clean Up. I am really hoping it does the trick. For those who remember reading about the shower sump debacle, it’s baaaack. Damn thing won’t start pumping water unless you give it a sharp rap with a heavy object. So much for West Marine brand systems. Damn thing’s got to be pulled out and replaced. Oh well, low priority. Until the next cruise that is.

Otherwise, slow but steady progress. I’ve ordered new main, mizzen, mizzen staysail, and flag halyards. To that order I added my new 406 megahertz EPIRB, Furuno 1623 radar, and Sampson line splicing kit. Now if I can only finish the autopilot installation!

Much love to the friends and family who’ve supported me in this trip. You are a rare bunch and I am lucky to have you. Anyone notice the counter up in the top left?

Lee

Getting ready for the Harvest Moon Regatta!

I don’t know if I’ll sail as a part of the race or not, but I am going to take advantage of the full moon and do a shake out sail offshore. It’s about time. I still haven’t had Romance outside the Galveston Bay jetties so this isn’t a small undertaking for me. I’ve got a short list put together of things I need to accomplish on the boat before I could even meet the Category 3 offshore racing requirements. Not to mention it’s just stupid for a novice sailor to go offshore without some of these things. A few of these have been on other lists, but things like fixing the transmission took priority. I am really excited to be back on track and getting my boat ready for offshore cruising.

Must Do:

1. Purchase and install an offshore life raft. Practical Sailor just did a big spread on life rafts. I may take their advice and buy the budget recommendation. Avon makes a good raft that is relatively budget conscious as well. I need to pull the trigger and get this piece of gear mounted on my deck.
2. Buy an EPIRB! I can’t believe I’ve left this off the must do list for so long.
3. Replace the old Furuno 1621 Radar with a newer 1623. My old unit has crapped out and as with all my old electronics I have realized they are not worth repairing. To do this right I just need suck it up and buy new gear. The 1623 is a direct upgrade to my old unit so should be an easy install. It draws low power and has a 16NM range which should be plenty for me.
4. Finish the autopilot install. I don’t know why I’ve let this drag on, but it’s time to wrap it up.
5. Boil out the heat exchanger on the old Westerbeke 4-108. She still overheats above 2000 rpm.

Nice to do:

1. Buy a Garmin GPS chartplotter. I haven’t decided between the old 492 or one of the 550 models. One is discontinued and the other just had a major recall. Probably the newer one since Garmin does have great customer service if it has a problem.
2. Replace the mainsheet, main halyard, move the current main halyard to the spinnaker halyard.
3. Replace all running rigging on davits, mizzen mast, and spinnaker pole.
4. Get my Garmin handheld back to Garmin for repair.
5. Install lifeline netting on the deck to keep me and the pup onboard while underway.
6. Pull the windless and get it sand blasted and powder coated.
7. Do a top and bottom oil change on the 15 hp Johnson outboard.
8. Get the Main and Mizzen over to Cameron for repair, renewal, or replacement.
9. Secure the second CQR to the anchor chain and road with new stainless fittings.
10. Win the lottery to pay for all of this.

Last Video from Labor Day

Monday Night at Red Fish Island

Labor Day: Part One

So I should note here that I was motoring to both check the engine, and because Red Fish was dead into the wind. Yes, I could have beat my way out there, but the concert only lated an hour and I wanted to hear a little of it anyway.

The noise from the power boats was deafening. I stayed way out on the perimeter of the anchorage until almost everyone was gone before I moved into the lee of the island.

This wraps up day one. More to come as I get them uploaded. I am thinking about buying a software package called Pinnacle for video editing. Does anyone have any experience with it? I'd like to be able to cut these together and get the whole story put into one video instead of five or six shorts. Hope everyone had a great weekend. I know I am not ready to go back to work.

A typical chain of events.

Romance did leave the slip last weekend. I finished up the major clean up and repaired the engine kill cable, but figured it was more important to get the boat out of the slip than spend more time on the autopilot installation. I was a little concerned right off the bat because the engine was running a little hot. Nothing major, but around 190 – 195 when she should hold at 180. Georgia and I made it out to Galveston Bay and after feeling sure the transmission was working well decided to hoist the main sail for a quick run under sail.

This is the first time I’ve ever had romance out single handed and it was an interesting challenge. I got the main up, but had a batten get hung on the outside of one of the lazy jacks so it looked terrible. While I was fighting with this, Georgia let me know she didn’t quite have her sea legs yet. She was walking around very carefully concerned that the place she was about to put her paw might move out from under her. Nothing she won’t get used to.

After fooling around on the water for a half hour or so I headed back to the slip. Everything was going pretty well until I heard my bilge pump go off just as I was pulling into my slip. Any time that goes off it means the boat has taken on some water. Once every once in a long while is ok, but the damn thing went off again about 3 minutes later which meant I was taking on water and rapidly.

I crawled down below to find the leak and was shocked to find water pouring out of my hot water heater. My first reaction was to turn off the boats water pressure pump and luckily that stopped the flow of water. I mulled it over awhile and concluded it had to be one of two things. First, the over pressure valve on the hot water heater could have gone bad as they are known to wear out easily. This would have been the easy fix. The second option was that the over heating of my engine was in fact boiling the fresh water in the hot water heater tripping the correctly functioning over pressure valve. The raw water that cools the engine runs through the hot water heater so that you don’t have to use electricity to heat the water while you are under way. To test it all out all I did was let everything cool off and turn the pressure pump back on. Sure enough it held water so I had an engine problem.

Yesterday I had the mechanic out from Y.E.S. to walk me through the diesel servicing procedure for my engine, a Westerbeke 4-108. Having a professional walk me through the procedure probably saved me many days of fumbling around the engine lost on my own. He also gave me tons of insight into trouble shooting and general maintenance tips. His first suggestion was to replace the coolant reservoir cap and see if it helped. Five dollars later from O'Reilly auto parts I got the new cap on the engine held her temp almost exactly at 180. This made me really happy. Just to be sure all was well I pulled off the engine cover and to my dismay found coolant being blown all over the engine. The mist was so fine I could actually taste the sweetness and realize how this stuff kills so many pets who find open bottles lying around. Anyway, I shut down the engine and luckily it’s nothing more than a hose that needs cleaning up and refit to the engine. A 20 minute job. Having the new 7 lb cap on the coolant reservoir increased the pressure of the closed system and forced the hose to blow. Better to find out now rather than later.
Overall, I am ecstatic with the progress. The boat is literally ready to go sailing at the drop of a hat. I know how to maintain most of the systems and believe I can keep this boat running. I do still need to learn about the refrigeration systems, but that is for another day. Today, I am going to write up the servicing procedure so I’ll have the reference for next time and may head out to anchor somewhere by Galveston or Red Fish. There is a big party called the Red Fish Raft Up on Sunday and it sounds like a good time to me.

What’s that noise?

Something very unusual disturbed the peace and solitude that has existed in slip 1334 in Waterford Harbor Marina. A rumbling growl shook wind and water this morning sending fish to the deep and ducks flying in panic. My heart beat began to race and I realized that it was quickening in perfect unison with the throttle lever I was gently easing forward in my right palm. After five long months of languishing under the Texas sun, roasting in the juices of the Houston humidity, the heart of Romance, and my own, roared to life after too long a silence.

I’ve had a difficult time wiping the smile that runs from ear to ear off of my face. For the first time I realize why some moments with boats deserve nothing less than a bottle of champagne. Unfortunately, my refrigerator has only a few cans of Coors Light, so despite the early hour, I’ve cracked a can and am reveling in the moment. My boat is no longer a floating condo, but once again the sailing vessel that can carry my dreams and I across the oceans.

There is much to do this weekend to undo the five months of slumber. Romance has months of dust and grime built up on her hull that will be washed away with soap and water. The drive arm of the autopilot still needs the rudder indicator arm, control head, compass, and computer installed. The wooden panels that make up the cockpit lockers have been removed to make room for both men and hardware and will need to be fiber glassed back into the hold. Some how in the past five month the kill cable for the engine has come undone and must be reattached otherwise killing the diesel will require a trip below decks while on the water. With luck, with projects partially finished or in full, Romance will go sailing this weekend.

I've got a GEAR!

It's been a crazy couple of weeks. I've been gone for seven days for work, but good things are happening. Before I left I got the linear drive arm installed for the autopilot and primary anchor and chain replaced on the boat. Today the guys from Y.E.S. are here reinstalling my transmission. If all goes well I might even be able to take this boat out for a spin this weekend. I am still not getting my hopes up until I am pulling out of the slip.

On another note, I went sailing in San Diego this past weekend. What was supposed to be a relaxing trip to Isla Contadora in Mexico really put me to the test more than I was expecting. We pulled out of SD harbor Saturday morning for an overnight sail to Isla Contador about 18 miles from the dock. The sail down was excellent, but once we dropped anchor we realized there was no oven, no fuel for the range, no grate for the BBQ grill, and no matches to light it anyway. So dinner suddenly turned into a difficult proposition. After much debate I pulled out a trusty emergency signal flare, lit it, and used the flare to light the little bbq grill. I pulled the grate off the range top in the kitchen and delicately began grilling our pork tenderloin. We had no plates, no silverware, no pots, and no pans so wine from our three plastic cups and eating uncut pork tenderloin off a plastic fork was as good as it got.

About the time we started thinking about hitting the sack I went to turn the battery selector to 1 so that we had number 2 in reserve to start the batter in the morning. Unfortunately, batter number two was completely dead and had no longer been taking a charge while at the dock. This meant running off one batter. About this same time we realized we were only ten feet from another boat in the anchorage which meant we were dragging anchor. So we fired up the Yanmar to charge batteries and relocate to a better holding spot. Thinking the hard part was passed us we hit the sack only to wake up every hour on the hour to check our holding.

At the 5:00 a.m. anchor check I realized that our anchor light was no longer on. I immediately went to start the engine and sure enough, that one little light completely killed batter number 1. We were at anchor in Mexico with no engine. This scared me a little. After working out our plan we sailed out the anchor and had a great beat back into San Diego Harbor. We were going to sail the boat right into the slip, but after dropping the main I realized the jib didn't have enough power to allow us to tack if needed. We called off the attempt and just before we reset the mainsail and struck the jib seatow drove by us. I kind of believe in signs sometimes and this isn't one I could pass on. No batter meant no VHF to hail Seatow so I just waived my arm and he came right over and towed us into our slip.

Overall it was a huge pain in the ass of a sailing trip, but for all the problems we encountered there wasn't a single one we couldn't handle. I'll never take out another charter boat without gong through it with a fine tooth comb. Lesson learned. Hopefully I'll be sailing Romance again by the end of the week and won't have to rely on charters and other peoples boats.

P.S. if you are having boat work done in the Kemah area don't trust any shop except YES. Click the blog title "I've got a GEAR" above to go to thier web page.

I've got a shiney anchor! a.k.a. Hot Dip Galvanizing

Bernard Moitessier, a famous French singlehanded sailor, recently reminded me that crusiers need to look for a few things when the refit a boat. Those are, in order of priority, effectiveness, reliability, and inexpensive. Cheap, that's what it's all about and cheap is a relative term in the boating world.

I had a half dozen people tell me that people don't hot dip galvanize anchors. I asked on every sailing forum I could find and no one had a reason why not. So I bucked the trend and took my 300 feet of 3/8 BBB anchor chain and three anchors to KT Galvanizing in Katy, TX and the results are outstanding. The big anchor alone would have cost over $800 to replace and all three combines would have pushed $1800. The chain new runs around $1000 + shipping on top of that. I was able to Hot Dip the whole lot for $200. That may be the best deal I've found yet on boat hardware.

Today is the first weekend I've had on the boat in a long time. I am digging into the autopilot installation today and tomorrow. With luck it will go smoothly and I can try and track down the signal error on the Radar unit. If all else fails, I just clean out the anchor locker and call it a weekend.

A cruise of a different kind.

So I did something I've wanted to do since I was a kid this past weekend. When I left Albuquerque I knew I'd be coming back every other weekend for almost three months and I'd need transportation. So I left my old motorcycle there. Well, now that school is out I decided to ride the old girl from Albuquerque to Houston. That was one hell of a trip.

I left on Friday afternoon thinking I'd take three days, but as soon as I dropped down in elevation about 1000 feet the bike started running really bad. Angrily, I turned the bike around and headed back for Albuquerque. The whole time I am running through possible solutions and wondering what could be wrong. What really surprised me was that the bike started purring again as soon as I got back into the mountains. That was the last clue I needed.

I've torn into the carbs on this old bike enough to know them inside out. There are four carbs and four pilot screws that controlled the fuel flow in the cylinders for combustion. It was set way to lean so once I opened the screws allowing more fuel in she ran great. In fact she outlasted me by a long shot.

I forgot sunscreen the first day and have some pretty good blisters on my right arm, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. Riding through the high desert of eastern New Mexico and the Texas plains was a great way to spend the weekend. I also learned that there is a big difference between hitting hard shell and soft shell bugs at 80 mph. One feels like rain and the other hurts like hell.

Anyways, the bike and I made it back and boat projects await. I got the anchors and chain back from being hot dip galvanized and they look great. That saved me over $2000 in replacement cost and only cost $200. I am going to try and get my autopilot installed this weekend. My trans is en route to Kemah and I have tentatively scheduled the install on the 20th. My radar isn't working for some reason so I may need to fix/replace it. My goal is to take a couple of days off over Labor Day and go sailing in my own boat. Won't that be nice for a change?

Schools out for summer!

Twenty-five months ago I made some major changes in my life. Within a two week time span I started a new job with Thermo, moved to Albuquerque from St. Louis, started Univ. of New Mexico’s Exec. M.B.A. program, and moved in with my girlfriend whom I’d been seeing long distance for a year. Seriously, what was I thinking?

I feel like I am now closing a significant chapter in my life. I am sitting in the Albuquerque airport having just attended my very last class for the MBA program. Taking stock today, I live on a boat in Kemah, TX, I broke up with the girl I moved to Albuquerque for four months ago, and now I’ve completed the MBA that has been a constant thread running through all of the changes I’ve made in the past few years tying them together and providing the backdrop to my life.

My head really, really hurts this morning. One of my group members invited the entire class over for a blow out to celebrate. There was much over indulgence. I think saying goodbye to those people and spending a day with Kris, the ex, this weekend has set my mind to spinning and I’ve got a bit of melancholy that has settled over the occasion. This weekend brought up some old questions concerning my relationship with Kris. They are unanswerable and I probably shouldn’t even indulge them, but I can’t help but wonder if things would have worked out the same if I hadn’t taken so much on? If I hadn’t ended it so close to the end of the MBA program would the time that has been freed up allow us to reconnect like we had before I moved to Albuquerque?

I do want to try and understand how and what happened more so that I don’t repeat the mistakes I’ve made in my next relationship. A lot of people have asked me about the sailing trip since the break up. Most have wondered if it is still on. I should be pretty clear about this. I don’t want to do this trip single handed. The idea of traveling the world by sailboat seems tailor made for a couple. However, if I don’t find someone by the time I am ready to go, I am still going. It means setting the boat up a little different, but all can be done safely. And who knows who I might meet along the way.

I am probably in the worst physical condition of my life coming off the MBA. The time to do the extra work had to com from somewhere and it seems to have come at the expense of personal health and personal relationship. I am going to spend the next several months trying to rebuild both areas including going to the gym and starting to spend time with family and friends.

I suppose I’ve kept myself so busy with work and school I still haven’t really thought about how I’ve landed where I am. It’s time to put the focus on being who I want to be instead of just being a busy person.

New Goals

I’ve gotten some good work done on the boat over the past few weeks, but I’ve still only scratched the surface. The other thing that dawned on me is that I’ve only had the boat out of the slip once since I moved aboard. That’s unacceptable. Granted the one time I had it out my transmission went bad, so it has been a little difficult to do much of anything. Regardless, I’ve got to start sailing again and soon if I have any chance of making a circumnavigation. I’ve never single handed Romance and I’ve got to learn. Does that strike anyone else as an odd thing to say, “Single Handed Romance”?

My transmission should be shipping back to me next week for reinstallation. This means I’ll be mobile again right after I finish my last class for school the weekend of the 27th. I’ve got three trips in mind.

First, I need to do some single handing in the Bay to get used to Romance again. I’ll need to get the autopilot installed, a GPS mounted at the helm, and learn to service and bleed the diesel. I’ll use the weekends to anchor out at Red Fish Island and break the boat in as much as I can while still within 10 miles of Clear Lake.
Second, I want to use Labor Day and maybe one other three day weekend to sail down to Port Aransas. It is about a 24 hour sail and will give me my first glimpse of sailing Romance off shore. I still don’t know how she’ll handle larger water. For this I need to make sure I’ve got my EPIRB purchased and I’d like to get my Life Raft replaced. There are several oil rigs out there so a course in Radar wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

Finally, I am going to Mexico. Well, almost. It’s a 50 hour sail from Galveston to South Padre Island where my Marina has a sister facility. I figure if I can take a full week off that will give me nine days to make the trip down and back leaving 3 or four days for preparations or repairs as needed in South Padre. This trip will be the first multi day passage I’ll have made. It’s the closest thing to a shake out sail I may get before the real thing.
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I need goals to drive myself. Motivation comes in waves and I want to start planning now so I can take advantage of the next one. School is almost done and I can concentrate my weekends of fixing up and sailing the boat. It is starting to feel a bit more real just thinking about sailing the boat again instead of treating her like a floating condo.

Clean Diesel Fuel and Movies

I had some guys over to the boat today with a big centrifuge to suck out the fuel and clean it up. I also installed a 4 in inspection port to try and get a better feel for the state of this 30 year old steel tank. Lots of exterior rust, but she seems pretty solid after all. Where I cut the port the tank is a little over 1/16 in thick. I won't bother replacing it until it really does spring a leak.

On another note, a couple of the sailing blogs I follow both recently published some really cool movies. I've included them below. I need to get a video camera and some editing software.

Progress, decisions, and cash

I’ve really dug into the boat projects over the past few days. I think it has something to do with not wanting to do the readings for my last semester of the MBA program or my expense reports for work. Apparently I am extremely productive when I am procrastinating.

In the past for our five days I’ve started sanding down the bright work on the boat, cleaned some of the grime off the engine and checked the freshwater impeller, topped up the battery bank with distilled water, pulled all 300 feet of chain w/ 3 anchors off the boat to prep for hot dip galvanizing, replaced and rewired my DVD player, and scheduled guys to check prices for both the replacement or repair of the Westerbeke 4108 and fuel tank.

I am still scared that I’ll get out somewhere remote and the rusty old iron fuel tank will spring a leak sending all my fuel to the bilge. That and with 8700 hours I am terrified my engine will give up the ghost. I still don’t think I can afford to rebuild or replace the 4108, at least not in the states anyways. I may be able to do it where the labor is much cheaper in Latin America. However, there is a lot of sludge built up in the fuel tank that has to come out. A good internal cleaning may well put a hole in it if it has rusted as thin as I think it might have. The guys are coming at 12:00 tomorrow to take a look and help me figure out the best way to go to ensure I have a good, clean fuel supply without breaking the bank.

My transmission should be coming back in another week or two. I am hoping now that I can complete some of the projects I’ve started in time to enjoy the boat over the Labor Day weekend. If I can learn to fully service the engine and get my autopilot installed by then I think the old girl will be ready to have a little bit of fun. I think we both need it.

Over analyzing

I’ve been known to beat dead horses. There are many times when I’ve thought myself right out of a project instead of leaping in and wrestling a solution out of it. While I was working to find a transmission I pretty much lost all motivation to work on other projects thinking it might be the death of this venture. However, I’ve come almost full circle with nothing but a piece of old sand paper. It seems that jumping into the deepend is the only way sometimes.

I was standing on the dock with one of my neighbors looking at the “potential” of my boat. Next thing I know we are talking about the various merits of varnish and cetol for the teak wood work on the boat known as bright work. Romance has multicolored wood at the moment. Parts are grey where the natural wood has weathered and parts are brown where the old finish is still hanging on to the wood. Overall, the result looks like the boat has been abandoned and is a real eye sore. Anyway, next thing I know I have an old piece of sandpaper I found in my tool kit and I am seeing how hard it is to remove the old varnish. To my surprise it came right off and the wood underneath was beautiful.

Once I realized that project might not be too bad I took the same said piece of sand paper over to my old anchor that is covered in rust. Who knew it would come right of with 120 grit paper. Tomorrow I am buying an orbital sander and going to town on my woodwork and anchors. I’ll varnish the wood and paint the anchor for maximum effect. This old boat might even start to look pretty again.

Happy 4th everyone. Hope no one lost a finger this year. Or toe, Dad?

Lee

Getting a little better....

So there is some light at the end of all this. I got a call yesterday from the guys at Federal Marine. They will be able to rebuild a transmission with the same specs as my old one by cannibalizing three other trans and ordering a few parts. The trans alone will run around 4K, but it sure beats total repower at 18K.

I took last night and got my old grill fired up for the first time and did some cooking on the boat. After buying a $140 propane tank I was a little upset when the grill wouldn't work at first. After cutting a few bolts and cleaning it all real well I got some great chicken out of the deal.

I am recently back from a family reunion, and from what I can tell they may be the only people who look at these pages. Anyways, the one constant piece of feedback I got was more posts. So I've been trying to keep them coming more often even if they are a little shorter. I thought people might like an idea of what this place looks like so I'll try to upload a video. Let me know if it works.

No love from Romance.

Ok, so I’ve been on the phone with parts shops way too long today. It’s generally not good news all around. The gear on my boat was a very rare one. It was 17 inches long and dropped 2.5 inches from the engine spindle to the output flange. No modern day gear has the same specs. (I need the PL model)

To make some of the newer models fit I may have to completely remove the engine and rebuild the engine mounts. A mechanic I trust told me that if I am going that far already I should seriously consider a total repower. I know he is right, but that would run around 18K before it was all said and done. That’s just more than I have to outfit this boat. I am really kicking myself for not having the engine inspected before I bought her. It is definitely true that if anyone really understood how much boats cost they would never own one.

To add insult to injury my AC hasn’t been cooling the boat off like it used to. I started digging around to see how difficult it would be to try and recharge the coolant in the system. I started poking around and realized I have no idea what I am doing. I need to call a technician, but will hold off until I get the engine problems sorted out. That or keep poking around until something clicks and I have an idea of how to proceed. Having this boat ready to go cruising is suddenly seeming a long, long way off.

If anyone has a line on a good rebuilt or rebuildable Paragon P25L let me know. It would save a world of hurt in Kemah.

Lee