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American Spirit II - Day 27; The Rudder; Thursday, January 30, 2014



Up at 3:30 AM. That's the penalty of going to bed at 10:00 PM. (5 1/2 hours sleep is what I normally get). It's really awful being in a hotel room as I was used to living in the boat for the previous 3 weeks. The 'hotel routine' is much different than the 'boat routine.' Go figure.

The Beach House had a free breakfast set up at 7:00 AM. After sampling a few items we headed for the yard, a 20 minute walk and a mile away. Arriving at 7:30 AM, one of the yard workers was already there working on the boat. It didn't take long to remove the rudder from the bottom of the boat. However, the rudder tube did not just 'fall out' of the boat once the rudder was removed, as it was epoxied top and bottom. The tube was also 'broken' at the top near the steering arm; which meant that it would have ultimately led to other problems later on. The great temporary fix that Joel did wouldn't have kept the tube from getting worse.

Since the rudder tube was epoxied top and bottom, it had to be forced out of the boat or cut out of the boat. The first attempt was to force it out of the boat by using a steel maillot and steel tube and pounding from above. That didn't work, so a special cutting tool had to be poked up from the bottom of the boat, where the rudder post fits into the boat, and the rudder tube had to be grounded out. That took all day. The new rudder tube did not fit into the hole for the old rudder tube. The reason is that the diameter of the wall of the old rudder tube was 3 centimeters thick; but the new rudder tube walls are 5 centimeters thick. Our conjecture is that the boat manufacturer may have had previous rudder tube issues and strengthened the tube by making it thicker. Unfortunately, that means the tube won't fit in the hole we have. The fix to this problem is to lathe and thin the walls of the tube to a thickness closer to 3 centimeters so that the tube fits in the hole in the boat. Making a larger hole for the 5 centimeter tube to fit in would require too much work in the time we have to complete this project. We have to be in the Las Perlas Islands NLT February 7. That being said, in inside diameter of the tube is exactly what is needed. The rudder post fits into the tube perfectly.

Once the new rudder tube is lathed, we will grease it up and make sure it fits all the way in before using epoxy to permanently glue it to the boat.

To say that all this is stressful is an understatement.

Dinner was freeze dried in the hotel room. Chicken Teriyaki with Rice. We used the backup electric stove element from the boat. We have that on board in the event we run out of propane or the propane stove stops working. You can only go out to dinner and wait 2 - 3 hours to consume a meal so many times. And at $6.50 per meal for three people its a whole lot cheaper.

After dinner we got the SIM Card installed on the new Satellite Phone, made the 'free' call to Iridium to make sure that it worked; and then called Janet Fox. The rate per minute of $1.39 is substantially cheaper than using a cell phone. Go figure.

Brian Fox



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