Several months ago my wife had found another good deal on plane tickets and bought three one way tickets to NJ with the intention of flying out of Detroit May 24th to start our trip. We were packed and ready to leave bight and early Sunday morning when we got the call Saturday night from the yard. They had been able to replace the stuffing box with a drip less unit, had fixed another leak I had found with a broken seacock (the surveyor had mentioned it but I forgot to get it on the list to have repaired) and had just put the boat back in the water. When doing so the muffler decided to rust though at that moment & the alternator went out (this was supposedly fixed as part of our deal before we bought the boat). Well yet another wrench had been thrown into our plans; we decided not to fly up and chalked up the cost of the plane tickets as a lesson learned. The yard now seems convinced that both issues can be repaired by Thursday, so we now have high hopes of doing a one way car rental and making the drive once again out to NJ on Thursday with the full intention of leaving for our trip Friday afternoon… If all goes well we think we can make it to the mouth of the Hudson River Friday evening & then start the three day trek up the Hudson to Albany Saturday morning as the tide is coming in.
If we can’t start the trip this weekend, I’m not sure what we are going to do as we don’t have any time available to try again until mid/late July….
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Our first weekend on the boat...
Finally the day had come we were off to spend our first weekend on the boat. We had the best laid plan, the marina was supposed to be fixing a few of the things identified in the survey & were supposed to put the boat in the water the weekend of May 15th. Our plan was to drive a car full of stuff (bumpers, anchors, clothes, ect) out to the boat in preparation for starting our trip the next weekend (May 24th). We had spent the previous few months reading up on the various safety equipment we would need & started buying basic boat stuff (dock lines, hand held marine radio, charts, etc). It appeared the canal opened in early May and we really wanted to get our boat home so we could spend as much time on it as we could over the summer…
Well as usual the best laid plans went down the drain our intent was to spend the weekend on the boat getting to know it, do some sailing, practice docking and all the other typical new boater stuff. Well this is where our adventure was to start, even though the surveyor had reported no problems with the engine apparently there were some problems…. We needed a new fuel tank and after getting that fixed the next hurdle was getting the engine to turn over. No fear the yard guys were supposedly on it & they had supposedly fixed the other items I had asked them to take care of so it would be “ready” for us when we got there.
Needless to say when we got there we were very excited to see the boat in the water, however, we could smell diesel from the dock and when we got down below it was really strong.. Guess they did not clean up the fuel that leaked out when they put the new fuel tank in? We were tired and decided to live with it until the next day. The next morning we were off to get some dish soap to clean up the mess in the bilge. When I got back imagine my surprise when I opened up the bilge I and noticed a good build up of water & then quickly found out nether of our bilge pumps were working… Well next we started the engine and now that the engine compartment was opened up it appeared the stuffing box was leaking… After making a few attempts at tightening it up it became apparent there were larger issues and the boat would need to be hauled out to have the stuffing box rebuilt… So that meant we were not leaving the dock that weekend and if we were lucky we could get the pumps fixed and spend rest the weekend on the boat without sinking. So after 12hrs, several trips to West Marine & Home Depot, and various other places around town we gave up on fixing the pumps for that night and the boat would need to be pulled. We had figured out the strange wiring set up, had gotten both the pumps up and working on several occasions only to have both pumps fail again or to have another hose break. It was now 9pm it was dark and we were tired. We had spent our first weekend on the boat and accomplished very little. We left a list of additional items for the yard to fix when they hauled the boat and a bit discouraged we spent the night in a hotel before heading home the next morning.
Our newest adventure... The boat.
I am going to attempt to start documenting our adventures with our new to us boat that is a Allmand 31 sailboat. Today it still carries the previous owners name “Incentive” but will eventually have its name changed to Escape Plan. I suppose only time will tell how well I do at maintaining this log?
One very snowy day last December I was surfing the internet looking at fancy sailboats we could not afford when low and behold appeared almost the exact boat my wife and I had been wanting & the price just happened to be pretty close to the number we had in our boat fund. Needless to say we made the call & after talking it over put in an offer and eventually got to a price we all could live with.
Now that we had a price agreed to my wife and I were off to actually see the boat and ensure it lived up to the pictures posted on the internet. Only problem was we live in MI & the boat was located in NJ. Luckily my crafty wife was able to find some cheap airline tickets that would let us make a day trip to see the boat vs the 22hrs we might have spent in the car if we drove. We have had a few false starts on similar models in the past.. One was taken off the market before we got an offer on the table, another ended up being way too much of a project, while yet another had a cracked keel that was leaking fuel somehow? Needless to say we were a bit skeptical of what we would find when we arrived in NJ.
NJ had received the better part of 8 inches of snow the night before we arrived, but that did not deter us from shoveling off the boat and sticking our heads into every nook and cranny. In the freezing weather my wife and I spent the better part of the day inspecting the boat and walked away pretty happy with what we saw. This boat was actually in fairly good condition for its age & we could afford it, imagine that? We decided that even though we had been over it pretty good we should still hire a marine surveyor to reassure us that we were not missing anything and to our luck we ran into one during our visit that mentioned he sort of specialized in sailboats. After getting a few good recommendations we hired him & after a few agonizing weeks he came back with a few minor things to fix but overall assured us it was a good boat and it would be safe.
With this we mailed off our check and a few weeks later a title arrived in the mail. I have to admit it was not the most gratifying thing to send off a large check only to receive a piece of paper back saying you now own a boat oh and by the way don't forget to stop by your local DMV & give Uncle Sam his cut of the transaction. Not to mention the pain of not being able to see or touch our new toy as its several states away...
Our next decision was do we have the boat put on a truck and delivered to our local marina in MI or do we bring it back ourselves? After doing some research we guessed that if all went well we should be able to do the trip in just over two weeks. We opted to bring it back ourselves which will mean that we sail a short ways up the intercoastal water way, up the Hudson River, through the Erie Canal, and then across Lake Erie from Buffalo to Detroit.
One very snowy day last December I was surfing the internet looking at fancy sailboats we could not afford when low and behold appeared almost the exact boat my wife and I had been wanting & the price just happened to be pretty close to the number we had in our boat fund. Needless to say we made the call & after talking it over put in an offer and eventually got to a price we all could live with.
Now that we had a price agreed to my wife and I were off to actually see the boat and ensure it lived up to the pictures posted on the internet. Only problem was we live in MI & the boat was located in NJ. Luckily my crafty wife was able to find some cheap airline tickets that would let us make a day trip to see the boat vs the 22hrs we might have spent in the car if we drove. We have had a few false starts on similar models in the past.. One was taken off the market before we got an offer on the table, another ended up being way too much of a project, while yet another had a cracked keel that was leaking fuel somehow? Needless to say we were a bit skeptical of what we would find when we arrived in NJ.
NJ had received the better part of 8 inches of snow the night before we arrived, but that did not deter us from shoveling off the boat and sticking our heads into every nook and cranny. In the freezing weather my wife and I spent the better part of the day inspecting the boat and walked away pretty happy with what we saw. This boat was actually in fairly good condition for its age & we could afford it, imagine that? We decided that even though we had been over it pretty good we should still hire a marine surveyor to reassure us that we were not missing anything and to our luck we ran into one during our visit that mentioned he sort of specialized in sailboats. After getting a few good recommendations we hired him & after a few agonizing weeks he came back with a few minor things to fix but overall assured us it was a good boat and it would be safe.
With this we mailed off our check and a few weeks later a title arrived in the mail. I have to admit it was not the most gratifying thing to send off a large check only to receive a piece of paper back saying you now own a boat oh and by the way don't forget to stop by your local DMV & give Uncle Sam his cut of the transaction. Not to mention the pain of not being able to see or touch our new toy as its several states away...
Our next decision was do we have the boat put on a truck and delivered to our local marina in MI or do we bring it back ourselves? After doing some research we guessed that if all went well we should be able to do the trip in just over two weeks. We opted to bring it back ourselves which will mean that we sail a short ways up the intercoastal water way, up the Hudson River, through the Erie Canal, and then across Lake Erie from Buffalo to Detroit.
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