Liveaboards

Originally posted at www.svsweetescape.com

The past week has been really busy.  

We moved aboard Sweet Escape on Saturday July 14th, but actually it was a three day process that went something like this.  Judy would decide that something or other was going on the boat and Brian would object on the basis that A - We don’t have room for it and B - We don’t really need it anyway.  The item, whatever it was, would then go on the boat.

It is impressive just how much Sweet Escape can hold. Judy has done an amazing job jamming things - in Brian’s opinion, most of them useless and unnecessary, into lockers, drawers, cubbyholes and any other available storage space aboard.  In an effort to prevent domestic discord, Brian has gone along with this arrangement but is secretly planning to jettison much of this ballast overboard as we go.   

We have been dealing with several boat issues as we prepare to leave Wisconsin that include the following:  

At some point during our Lake Michigan crossing earlier in the month we began hearing an odd ticking or clicking sound that seemed to be coming from the running gear and which seemed to be present only when the shaft was turning when sailing or motoring.  

It has finally begun raining in Southeast Wisconsin after a two month long drought.  These recent rains have revealed a mast step leak that makes itself known when water runs down the compression post in the salon during a heavy rain. 

A cockpit stereo that we had installed proved itself to be slightly temperamental and there appears to be an intermittent communications problem between our new Raymarine multi function display and the rest of the boat’s electronic sailing and navigation instruments.  

And finally, we have been dealing with a problem involving our new Manson Anchor which seems to be too large for our bow roller.  The problem is the anchor smacks the bottom of our roller furler and the forestay fitting whenever it (the anchor) is raised or lowered.  It is critical that we protect our forestay fitting.  We have decided to have a simple guard welded to the bow roller in order to keep this from happening and thus prevent damage which could cause a failure of the entire rig.

Brian considered diving on the boat to inspect the running gear for the ticking sound but ultimately decided to have Sweet Escape hauled for this purpose because he was reasonably certain that the sound had something to do with the line cutters that had recently been installed or possibly a shaft zinc that had slipped.  In either case the boat would probably have to come out of the water anyway.  The mast step leak would require that the mast be unstepped, the compression post removed and the leak repaired and the other issues would be warranty issues that Racine Riverside would have to address.

So on Tuesday July 24th we brought Sweet Escape back to Racine Riverside and parked her in their well before leaving on a three day trip with grandson Cameron that took us to to see Judy’s sister Carla in Menasha, a stop in Oshkosh and from there over to the Wisconsin Dells.

We returned on Thursday to find Sweet Escape still in the well with her mast down and Technician Scott working on repairing the leak.  The chart plotter problem had been addressed leaving only the anchor issue to be dealt with Friday morning.

The ticking sound turned out to be a plastic spacer that had partially come off our Spurs line cutter.  Not a major problem, this was easily corrected by Riverside.

We are getting close to leaving.  We have done the farewell tour and we feel that the boat is ready to go.  Now we are beginning to look for a weather window that will take us east across Lake Michigan from Racine to White Lake.  We are hoping to make our August 1st target date but of course with all things cruising, Mother Nature has the last word.

You may be wondering how we are doing after a little more than a week as live-aboards.  Quite well actually.  Sweet Escape really does have everything we need and life on the river here in Racine is quite interesting.  

It seems as if there is always something going on.  

There has been some work going on in the area rebuilding the east marker for the Racine reef.  To do this they use what has to be at least a 100 foot long barge complete with cement truck and full size crane which is pushed/pulled around by a large and very powerful tug boat.  These vessels are kept in the mooring basin just to the east of our slip at Pugh Marina.  Each morning we see the work crew arrive, lunch boxes in hand as they walk down the dock in front of our slip, get in a boat that is kept a few slips away from us and motor out to the barge.  From there they take the barge out to the reef marker a little over a mile east of the harbor entrance.  This is repeated in reverse at the end of the day.

Anyone who has spent much time aboard boats knows that one becomes keenly aware and highly sensitive to noises being made by your own boat and the boats around you.  So it was last Wednesday morning when we were awakened to a very deep throated revving sound that seemed to be right next to us causing Brian to leap out of bed to find out what in the hell was going on that was causing our entire boat to vibrate like the bed at a Howard Johnson’s.

Upon emerging from the companionway what he saw was the afore mentioned 100 foot barge and it’s large tugboat just feet from our stern.  It appeared the tug was attempting to slow the barges progress up the river by backing down on it at high rpm’s hence the noise and vibration.  But what were they doing here?  We had never seen the barge on the river itself before and why were they stopping in the middle of the channel and how long would they be here?  The answers to these questions came as the crew began offloading what appeared to be gas bottles with their crane and then loading new ones onto the barge.  Once this was accomplished, the tug proceeded to pull the entire rig back down the river and out onto the lake for their days work.