Burning Daylight

fly away birdie

It’s time to fly away to new things and new places. The ever-more-complicated-windlass-motor-issue kept us captive here for too many weeks in one marina. I just can’t take it anymore! The motor still isn’t working but we just HAVE to move on. I’ve been teasing the harbor crew that this marina is the “Hotel California” and we need to break away! Fingers crossed that the windlass motor will be ready by Monday for us. Even if it is not, we plan on leaving here Tuesday or Wednesday–we’ve just GOT to MOVE! We won’t be able to switch anchorages at will, but we can plop the hook in Aquatic Park and spend some time in downtown San Francisco whilst we wait for the motor to be done. The latest in a long series of the fixes involves a local electric shop sending our ancient windlass motor (the original failure) to Arizona to have the armature done and to also have the impossible-to-replace commutator custom made by a gentleman there who knows his stuff. Fingers crossed that it works! The two replacement motors will be going back to the manufacturer and we will hope to get one back that we can use as a “spare.”

Happy tweets and whistles from David, Beryl, and I as we’re almost…almost…almost back out there enjoying the anchorages. I have a laundry list of places to visit in the next 3 months–all over the Delta and along the Pacific near San Francisco.

More Details

Take things apart and find you need new parts. Yesterday’s windlass tear down to put the new brake on made me take a close look at the shaft key. It was bent from a recent overload with twisted chain. So, $5 worth of new 1/4″ key stock gave us the ability to make a new key. Of course, we had to find a friend with a car to go the 20 miles to the shop with the stuff. Otherwise it would have taken an extra day. As it was, yesterday afternoon David and the friend ran the errand. So, this morning finally David and I are back to 4 hands on getting that new brake in place!

What is Time Anyway?

anchor windlass in use

Our planned two weeks in San Diego is beginning to look like an unexpected month in San Diego. Seeing friends and catching up on things helps make it an enjoyable month, but we’d really like to be on our way again. The anchor windlass motor has been to three shops with the final diagnosis of “can’t get the parts to rebuild it” from all. Well, one said “eventually we could get the parts in maybe 6 weeks, maybe 12 weeks.” We ordered a new motor from the Ideal Windlass company almost three weeks ago. They’re telling us that they’ll be getting the motor (which must be modified to work in the windlass) next Friday and can ship the same day they get the motor in to their shop. Now, they’re not open on Fridays, but we won’t let that little detail deter us from believing that perhaps one of their loyal employees is going to come to the shop, modify the motor, and ship it out to us next Friday. Stranger things have happened.

Why not just get another windlass? Well, to pull up that heavy 1/2″ BBB chain (3 lb/ft) it takes a pretty hefty windlass and the cost of such a windlass would be anywhere from $6K to $12K. So, better to wait upon the motor. We do know of a fellow who modified the same windlass we have so that it operated on a hydraulic pump. Somehow the idea of having hydraulic fluid leaking all over the place doesn’t seem like a smart choice for us though. We’ll wait. So, what’s a few extra weeks in San Diego, anyway? We’re able to get things done here and the anchorages are very shallow requiring very little chain go out. So getting the chain up using a sheet winch isn’t too terrible here. But we’d prefer to have our full windlass back up and running. And it will be…in a couple weeks.

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