Just Another Day

Posted on by under living aboard

Just another day today.  Marking time until tomorrow.  Tomorrow is a “special” day.  Tomorrow I get to find out if I have my surgeon’s blessing to, quite literally, boogie!  Keeping my fingers crossed that all precautions I’ve taken are no longer necessary and that I can start pushing myself harder.  I’ve been gingerly avoiding doing things which hurt the groin and thigh too much in these past 6 weeks.  However, “in theory” I should learn that the bone has grown nicely into the new fake hip and I can start pushing things a bit!  Yea!  And–of course that we can get out of San Diego and moving up the Coast.

I’m planning on visiting a couple nice new anchorages in the Channel Islands before spending some extra time–if weather permits–at the other anchorages we enjoyed up and down the coast in 2010.

Buttercup’s Latest

Posted on by under car repairs

You know, I do believe Buttercup can read.  Really.  And she’s been reading the blog.

Just as we’re ready to whisk ourselves away and up the coast sailing, she threw a major hissy fit last Thursday.  She was running a bit rough earlier in the day and David started driving her much more aggressively.  Those two have always had their…well…shall we say “issues?”

David picked me up after my physical therapy session downtown and we headed back to the boat to finish up putting seals around the new doors David made for enclosing Mahdee’s engine compartment.

Not 15 minutes into the drive, with David accelerating hard and pushing dear Buttercup.  Yes, you do hear sympathy in my voice here.  Buttercup is an old lady–she’s allowed to degrade and well, it is her nature to have hissy fits when she’s not the center of attention!  David should know better than to push her.  Buttercup always wins.

So…back to the story, 15 minutes into the drive, just as we were cresting the Coronado Bridge we began to hear a tap, tap, tap and Buttercup triumphantly said “so see what you made me do???”  and “so THERE!” she blew up the exhaust valve on her number 1 cylinder.  We coasted into a parking place in front of a church.

As I accusingly glared at David, saying “how COULD you do this to poor Buttercup?” he just glared back and called Buttercup something I won’t repeat here.  David popped the valve cover gasket off and checked the valves.  Nothing obvious there.  So, he got the folding bike out of the trunk–where we often keep it since we go from anchorage to anchorage and often David rides the bike to pick up the car or drop it off at the next anchorage we’ll be in–and rode it the 3 miles down to Fiddlers Cove and picked up Wesley along with the car diagnostic tools.

A short while later, we discovered no compression in Buttercup’s number 1 cylinder and called for a tow truck to take us to North Island’s auto hobby shop.  Thank goodness for USAA’s free towing service with our insurance!  David drove me home and then later took the head off the engine, stared at it in disbelief as he looked at the full extent of Buttercup’s hissy fit.  She’d blown up the valve and a couple tiny bits were welded to the top of the piston.

David was ready to just give up on Buttercup but since he’d been hoarding an old spare engine for her that someone gave us last year, he couldn’t quite look me in the eye and say “lets get rid of her.”  The next morning we drove over to the hobby shop parking lot where Buttercup sat and I took a look at the piston.  It looked fixable to me without pulling the engine.  A tiny bit of blown up valve welded to the piston where it could be filed off. Yes, this looked doable.  And, thank goodness the good-ole-packrat personality of David came to the rescue here with that spare engine head.  So, I ordered engine gaskets for overnight delivery and we said if they arrived by the weekend, we’d just install the new “spare” head from the other engine.  If not, we’d take the spare head to a nearby wholesale automotive machine shop where it could be resurfaced, pressure tested, and cleaned.

The gaskets didn’t arrive.  Not only did they not arrive, I learned that though all the auto parts places list these gaskets, none seem to have them.  We took the bad head as well as the spare head to the machine shop where the spare is being spiffed up into something quite nice for Buttercup as I write.

I really puzzled over this blow up wondering how it could have happened with Buttercup being fairly low miles for a Saab and all.  She had less than 70K miles when purchased in 1999 and now has around 150K.  Well, then David said “oh, yea, remember when we swapped out the head on Buttercup? We put Pepe’s old head on her because we thought her head might have problems?”  Ahhhh! Now it makes sense.  Pepe, our 1974 Saab 99le had over 460K when we “let him go” to car heaven due to body fatigue.  The head was installed in Pepe in 1983 when Pepe had about 150K…so that was a really, really high mileage head we’d saddled poor Buttercup with.

But, all is well, we’ll be picking up Buttercup’s spiffy rebuilt head from the machine shop tomorrow and (in theory) gaskets should all be here by next weekend.  So–Buttercup will be back to the road again.

During all this Buttercup-itis–it’s been 6 weeks since my surgery and I can now drive again–I’ve had the opportunity to drive Wesley (the 1987 900 Turbo)  and I was appalled.  Poor thing, he needs new wheel bearings that David has been withholding!  So, to reward Wesley for being such a good sport about it, I ordered new front wheel bearings as well as an outer CV joint for the passenger side.  David will be doing penance and installing these on the weekend.

I do believe I’m going to have to more closely supervise David’s relationships with both cars–I really think they’ve had way too much abuse from him.

Restless

Posted on by under misc

It’s time to go North.

Link to Gordon Lightfoot’s Restless

I love this song.  For a long time, while living in our home in Washington, DC, when I heard this song I would think about the day that would come that David and I would sail away.  We would take that restless feeling and move on.

Those of us who live on a boat are lucky.  Very lucky. While Gordon Lightfoot sings:

“I can feel that restless yearning of those geese as off they roam
Then trade that for a warm bed and a place I can call home”

We can be thankful that we take our warm bed and the place that we call home with us wherever we go! As we follow the geese, the winds, the currents or just whatever catches our fancy, every anchorage, every harbor, and even the open sea is home.

We’ll be going as soon as my doctor gives me the thumbs up to leave town.  Hopefully in a week or two..or three at most!  Then we’ll spend a few weeks enjoying as many So. Cal anchorages as possible before making our way further North to the San Francisco Bay for the winter.

David is going into high speed doing so many projects as we ready ourselves for the trip North.  Both Buttercup and Wesley have been having their own hissy fits which must be repaired before we leave them.  We don’t know how long it will be before we come back down and pick up a car and drive it North, but we want both to be in good shape before we sail away. In addition to the unexpected car projects, the last things to do to the boat before we set off include building a second counter in the galley to house our second stove (that’s a story for later!) and doing the heavy work of planing the wood needed for the main saloon drop leaf table.  We’ll take the wood with us and David will likely put together the table somewhere “North” but I’m not quite sure where that will be.

We agree with Gordon that indeed–there’s a kind of restless feeling…

Lyrics

There’s a kind of a restless feeling and it pulls me from within
It sets my senses reeling and my wheels begin to spin
In the quietude of winter you can hear the wild geese cry
And I will always love that sound until the day I die
There’s a plain and a simple answer to each and every quest
From every quiet dance who might be a special guest
In a movie made for TV or a late night interview
You might even find them on the Young and the Restless too

Do ya get that restless feelin’ when you hear a whistle blast
Like an echo from the past
Of an old engine flyin’ down a road that’s ironcast

The lake is blue, the sky is gray, the leaves have turned to gold
The wild goose will be on her way, the weather’s much too cold
When the muskie and the old trout too have all gone down to rest
We will be returning to the things that we love best

Do ya get that restless yearning when you think about your dad
And the scrimshaw that he had
Of an old schooner rovin’ ‘neath a sky that’s ironclad

There’s a kind of a restless feeling and it catches you off guard
As we gaze off at the distance through the trees in my back yard
I can feel that restless yearning of those geese as off they roam
Then trade that for a warm bed and a place I can call home

Will ya get that restless yearning when you hear the wicked blast
Of a spectre from the past
Of a cold diesel rollin’ down a road that’s built to last

Still I get that restless feelin’ when I hear a whistle blast
See an image from the past
Of an old schooner flyin’ down a sky that’s overcast

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