Our anchor brake is here–well sort of… As related earlier, the critical chunk of steel was disintegrating during our storm adventure. Fortunately it held during the storm and we ordered a replacement. Upon weighing anchor at the cruisers anchorage, we headed to the public dock where no anchoring would be required. When we finally got the tracking number from the windlass company, we discovered the brake was sitting at the UPS distribution center. This was late Friday and the last day to pick up the part was Monday–after which it would be returned to the windlass company. Our ten days at the public dock was also almost up and we had planned on being at an anchorage on Monday and would need the brake for that anchoring. Fortunately, the UPS Center was open on that Saturday to handle the big Christmas surge and we were able to get the brake the next morning. Unfortunately, the brake was a different design from the old one and couldn’t be used without additional parts. We were lamenting the fact with a fellow boater who is a welder and he observed that the new brake had a faulty weld and shouldn’t be used anyway.
Then Brenda came down with the flu from hell. I have known her for 30 years and she has never been so sick. She claims that she might have been that sick once before, but I was on work-related travel and so missed seeing her. I was torn between staying with her and driving around to find parts to fabricate a replacement brake. Even though we were almost out of our allotment of days on the public dock, it was clear we had to stay an extra day. Our plan was to save two public dock days for when my Sister was in town visiting. Now we were down to one, but with Brenda in her condition and having a marginal anchoring capability we couldn’t leave. When it looked like Brenda would survive, I took the brake to the fellow boater. He wanted to see if the bronze and steel parts of the brake were soldered or brazed. We heated up the brake and everything held together…must be brazed. A little more heat and two things happened. We were now certain that it was brazed, but the brake pad ignited. So much for a marginal brake, the thing was now unusable. I took off to get a strip of steel to replace the band. I had bronze brazing rod, but my torch kit acetaline bottle was empty and with my lack of brazing experience I didn’t really want to experiment with the brake. Meanwhile, Brenda was not getting worse, but she wasn’t getting better, so we used our last day at the public dock. Unlike most places, once your days are used up on the public dock, there is no extending. If you don’t leave, you get fines and your boat is impounded. No slack, no excuses. We had to leave tomorrow morning.
The welder friend told me to get a specific brand of laundry detergent to use as flux for the brazing project. I went to two stores and couldn’t find the stuff. The boatyard where our friend has his torch was now closed for the night, so I headed back to Mahdee. In my distracted state, I took a wrong turn and ended up somewhere I had never been. I looked to the right and there was a CVS. This must be fate, so I turned in and sure enough, they had the unusual detergent. Check out time was 11AM. I got an early start and headed over to the boat yard where my friend did a fantastic job of brazing the old bronze fittings onto the new steel band. With the steel just cool enough to handle and with no brake shoe material on it yet, I jumped back into the car and got back to Mahdee in time to check out. Brenda was marginally functional, but she had arranged for us to use our Yacht club membership to get a reservation at a very nearby Yacht club. We loaded up the dingy, and secured the power and water lines and cast off dock lines. Brenda did a fantastic job getting out of the tricky public dock slip. At the Yacht club, the visitor dock is on a very narrow fare-way. Brenda’s approach was looking great, but we had failed to check the tides in our rush to depart. Mahdee started to go sideways toward the corner of a dock. But Brenda has gained some tricks and before I could say anything, she had compensated and Mahdee had twisted into a perfect arrival at the dock. I stepped off Mahdee with zero forward motion and less than a foot to the dock. We tied up and Brenda went back to sleep. This was her birthday and she couldn’t even be persuaded to get out of bed to walk up to the club house for either a hot shower or a birthday celebration meal.
The next day, Brenda was feeling much better, so we departed to go to the anchorage. In the meantime, we had figured out how to drop the anchor without the brake. On a smaller boat with reasonably sized chain all we would need to do would be to toss out the anchor and let out some chain with your hands as we have done on our old 30 foot sailboat. One slip up on Mahdee, however, and the 1600 pounds of anchor and chain could run uncontrollably out and over the side and there would be no way to stop it–hence the need for a hefty brake. The newly brazed part still didn’t have the brake lining attached. We needed to rivet it on, but we hadn’t figured out how we were going to do it. I favored using some bronze rod and making the rivets from scratch. Brenda thought that there must be a supply of rivets somewhere. The anchoring procedure was that I would put out a large loop of chain that would hang between the bow roller and the hawse pipes. The water in the anchorage was 11 feet deep and the roller is about 5 feet above the water, so I wanted the loop to have 16 feet. I would lie on the bowsprit with my legs wrapped around something on deck so I wouldn’t slide forward. I would then pay out the chain over the roller until it hit bottom. Then we would back down while I used my foot as a brake on the windlass until we had sufficient scope out. Then Brenda would stop the boat. I would attach the chain grabber and snubber, and finally, Brenda would rev up the big Cummins in reverse to set the anchor.
The first thing that happened when we were positioned in our anchoring site was that a little Duffy electric boat decided to come up right next to Mahdee’s bow. Everyone on board that little boat had a camera and were snapping shots of Mahdee. Oh well, time to focus. I get out on the bowsprit and lie down with my feet bent around the forestay. I don’t have the leverage to get the 105 pound cqr anchor started over the roller. Actually, the pivot joint is slight jammed against the bronze sides of the roller. I try to sit up, but my shoe lace has wrapped around a fairlead on Mahdee’s gunnel. I work to get untangled (click, click, click) so I can sit up and work the anchor loose, but I am afraid to let it go too far because if it falls off the roller I won’t be able to stop it. I get it lose, but not too lose and then get back down in the prone position on the bowsprit with a firm grip on the anchor chain. Click, click click from the Duffy 10 feet away. I secretly hope the anchor will fall right through their boat and sink them and their cameras. I have done the math and should be able to control the 105 pound anchor and the 50 pounds of chain in that 16 foot loop. In my peripheral vision, it seems as if the boat passengers are dressed in Christmas red costumes. Back to the job at hand. Hand over hand, I pay out the chain. As the last of the loop pays out, I feel the weight come off the chain–the anchor has landed on the bottom. I signal to Brenda to start backing down and I place my foot on the windlass where the brake would be–if there was one installed. At about 70 feet of chain I signal for Brenda to stop Mahdee which she does. I attach the chain grabber and snubber line. Click, click, click over on the port bow. I signal for Brenda to set the anchor. She runs the Cummins up to 2000 rpm and the chain pulls tight and the snubber line stretches and stretches. I wonder if I should have used a bigger snubber. The clicks have moved towards our bow as Mahdee went backwards. Brenda decides the anchor is set and puts Mahdee in neutral. The strained chain and snubber shoot Mahdee forward directly towards the Duffy. I wonder how this accident will be resolved. Some heroic maneuver by the Duffy is just enough to avoid a collision between the anchored Mahdee and the exuberant photo boat.
Our friend Chris is visiting for Christmas, so I head off in the dingy to buy groceries before he arrives. We have grand plans of sailing on Christmas, but within hours of Chris’s arrival, I am sick with the flu. By the time I got the bug from Brenda, I am sure its virulence had diminished, but I can’t recall being so sick in decades. All Brenda and I really wanted to do for the next several days was recuperate. Figuring out rivet plans was not going to happen. My sister was coming and we couldn’t return to the public dock. Brenda managed to get us into the nicest Yacht club in the city on reciprocals from our Yacht club–meaning this visit wouldn’t cost anything. Our first order of business after arriving at the yacht club and trying to get poor Mahdee’s appearance up to something less than embarrassing (by clearing off the deck and washing her down), was to go off in search of rivets. Brenda found that the only ones available weren’t quite right. We pondered our options while hanging out with my sister. It was her first visit to Mahdee afloat and being in a posh yacht club was icing on the cake. When we checked out of the yacht club, we took Mahdee out for her first bona fide sail–no motor running. The winds were light as we departed so I voted for heading out of the San Diego bay and into the Pacific. It was a beautiful sail, but before long we had some problems with the leather straps on the mainsail so we started the motor and motor-sailed with the staysail to pick up my sister’s husband who was on layover in town for New Years. We had a wonderful cruise of the bay and ended with a repeat anchoring using our new brakeless technique. This time there was no Duffy, but my sister’s husband did comment that it all seemed a little complicated.
It was time. The holiday visitors had all left. I got out the drill press and started drilling holes and countersinks for the rivets that we had had on board Mahdee all along in her spare parts. Brenda touched up the paint on the steel band which is very nice contrast to the windlass color, and I installed the brake today. So the holidays have been full of breaks/brakes. With the flu, the holidays and visitors to give us many excuses to just sit around, but now Mahdee is fully anchor capable with her new windlass brake–so its breaks/brakes for both us and Mahdee. And we are all rejuvenated after our holiday breaks/brakes.
