Crews Letter #2003 03 There Are Few Accidents in this World

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen:

There are few accidents in this world; there are many mistakes. A few of our mistakes catch up with us and we call them accidents.

Saturday morning we found Perception where we had left her last November. With the boarding ladder leaned up against the stern of Perception, the only prudent action was to tie the top of the ladder by line to the deck of the boat. <<Mistake #1>> We didn’t do this. For two days, Phyl and Fred went up and down this ladder without incident. All of the stuff we had brought was hoisted aboard. The batteries were connected and the vessel was connected to shore power. The electrical systems and appliances came to life. Not bad for the first day.

Sunday morning Phyl set to organizing things below and Fred washed the port side hull in preparation to polish it. The cloth of choice for polishing is called “stupid” in Greek and “ustubu” in Turkish. It is a collection of tangled cotton string, thread and fiber. Fred climbed up to the cockpit to get the “stupid” and polish. When he started down, <<Mistake #2>> he carefully stepped out on a rung above the bottom of the boat. This cantilevered out the feet of the ladder. It slid off the boat very rapidly with Fred on it. “Bend the knees!” he thought, “Bend the knees!” “Bend the elbows!” would have been an equally good thought. <<Mistake #3>> He didn’t bend his left elbow. He held on to the ladder all the way down. He landed on all fours.

From top to bottom, his feet dropped 10 feet vertical; the hands, somewhat further. After the impact, he stood up. Walked around some. Helped the workers from the neighboring boat put the ladder back up. Climbed up a 6 foot step ladder to tie the main ladder to the boat. And then using the step ladder, he polished about an eighth of the port hull.

This accomplished, he started to climb aboard Perception for a drink of water. His feet and ankles balked. His resolve to be ok dissolved. In defeat, he called for Phyl to close up the boat and they went back to the hotel.

That night he walked to the hotel restaurant for dinner and back to the room. Monday morning he could not walk to the toilet in the room. He could not stand up. His left arm and hand weren’t working either.

Our Turkey travel agent answered Phyl’s call. She came to the hotel with a wheel chair and took us to the hospital. In the emergency room, a doctor examined his legs, ankles, feet and left fore arm and hand. The legs, ankles and feet were declared strained and sprained, nothing time and exercise will not cure. They are still not recovered. The arm with Fred attached was sent to x-ray.

X-ray technicians in Turkey are cut from the same evil cloth as their counterparts in the US. They know you are there because something is hurt and will not move in normal ways. They demand that you move that something in ways that are impossible and then push it. The evil quotient of these people must be exacerbated by holes in the lead.

Even for the casual observer, it was obvious to Fred that both ends of his left ulna were not connected to most of the bone. The elbow end wasn’t even close.

The Orthopod scheduled the hospital admission, blood test, chest x-ray, Anesthesiologist a surgery room and Fred’s first antibiotics injection. These guys thought Fred’s rear end made a great needle cushion. Needles here lack some the refinement of US medicine. What is lacking in technology is more than make up for with human interaction. These people have or take the time to be concerned.

The surgery went well. The Orthopod screwed the wayward piece back on to the elbow end of the ulna.

Two injections and another set of x-rays and Fred was released from the hospital Tuesday afternoon.

Tuesday morning Phyl made the rounds to see people who were to be working on Perception. An interesting problem is to be female in a male society explaining how HER male screwed up and cannot take care of things. Giggling is NOT appropriate!! She arranged to have the hull cleaned and polished. This was to make certain that Fred didn’t try to do it. She negotiated an extended marina contract and set the date Perception would be ready to go in the water. She tried to get work started that was supposed to have been done over the winter.

The Recommissioning

The Keel

Perception’s keel is cast iron. We found the bottom with the keel a couple of times last season.

Gail and Sarah will remember the quay at Gerakas on Peloponnesus that we couldn’t fetch and the sudden stop in mid harbor at Xania on Crete. The Venetians left blocks of marble a meter thick in their harbor. We also remember running aground aft first when we slipped an anchor one night in Gerbeske, Turkey.

The water found its way in under the plastic skin of the keel. This showed itself with rust where the plastic was broken away and small bubbles in the surface. The bubbles were there when Perception came out of the water at the end of her only two seasons. These bubbles dry out and were flaking off when we returned for the start of this season. The combination of these two conditions made the keel a prime candidate for rust and electrolysis. The cure is not without price. Ignoring the problem is not without consequence.

We opted for the cure: Sandblast off the old skin. Apply two coats of an epoxy primer. The objective is to seal the cast iron and provide a cohesive surface for the next step. Apply two treatments of epoxy filler with liberal sanding of each layer. The objective is to smooth out the roughness of the cast iron. Two more layers of epoxy primer to seal the filler. Light sanding of each assures a smooth low friction surface. Antifouling specific primer and two coats of antifouling and we are set for the season.

Except for the antifouling, these additional steps will not need to be repeated for many years to come if Fred can keep some water between Perception and the bottom of the sea.

MAX-PROP

From last year:

Perception came equipped with an Italian built feathering propeller. It is a thing of beauty when it works. It propels the boat forward when the engine drives it forward and to the rear when the transmission reverses its rotation. The beauty is, when the boat is driving forward under sail, the prop blades turn parallel to the direction of the boat and virtually eliminate drag. What a joy when it works.

Last season, Perception’s first season, this prop worked well at the beginning and its performance deteriorated quickly. Within the first month, it became rather unpredictable when shifted into reverse exactly what would happen. By the end of the season, standard procedure when entering a harbor was to do test reverses in open quarters until a reverse was achieved. After she came out of the water the prop was a bit stiff. Figuring out the solution was left for this spring. This spring, it was completely locked up.

The function of this crafty tool depends on the smooth movement of gears on gears and hubs on shafts. This movement in every case is bronze on bronze facilitated by salt water resistant grease. When the prop was taken apart this spring, there was no residue of grease. Instead, the bronze surfaces were the graveyard of some shell life from the sea. Probably greasing it was something someone in Slovenia at the boat yard was going to do tomorrow. In the Mediterranean, “tomorrow” means “not today”.

If the lack of grease was not bad enough, the instruction manual was missing, the prop had never been properly assembled and Fred had no idea how to reassemble it. There was no indication of what the appropriate angle for setting the blades. The broker in Nice knows these things and he answers his phone. The instruction manual was available on the internet. Fortunately, just three boats down, was Toutazlmut. Her captain, David, has experience with Max-Prop and he was willing to share his knowledge. After a false start because the Elan team supplied the top of the line variety and the first set of instruction that showed up on the net were for the old, cheap model, everything got sorted out.

Perception’s Max-Prop was now sans sea life. It was full of grease and set at the magical 22 degrees. Unfortunately, the only real test was with the boat in the water and it would cost if it was wrong and had to come out for the prop to be reset.

The in the water test was completed without a problem. This prop is truly a “Thing of Beauty”.

This saga continued this year. The prop worked well last year, except the pitch was a bit low. At 2000 RPM engine speed, the boat made 5.5 knots in flat water. The previous season, 2000 RPM got 6 knots.

The Max-Prop VP feature says that you can change the pitch by moving the adjustment ring. It says that this can be done by hand in or out of the water. We discovered that this ring could be moved by a strong man at the end of a wrench with a three foot handle. When moved, a combination of grease and ground seashells came out of the gears looking a lot like beef coming out of a grinder. Once all of this mess was ground out, we flushed it with WD40 and clean grease.

This ring can now be adjusted by hand and when the cast comes off, Fred will try it underwater. The current setting is 24 degrees and the options go up to 40.

Batteries

There were some reoccurring problems with the batteries last year. One battery gassed severely and shorted out. It was replaced. The remaining set gassed slightly. Several experts who came aboard to deal with other issues noted that the battery hold was small and not well ventilated. They warned that this combination was a potential explosion and fire hazard.

The batteries have been replaced with gel batteries. This threat is corrected.

The Sailing Season

Perception went in the water Friday, 9 May. This is only four days later than the original plan and exactly the date that Phyl negotiated ten days earlier.

We moved aboard Saturday. Boat and marina life are much more comfortable than hotel and city.

Fred will have a cast for at least two more weeks. After that, we expect that it will be another two weeks before he will be wanting to raise sails. That puts it 1 July before Perception sets to sea. Unless, of course, there are some other mistakes coming home to roost.

Keep a Tight Luff,
Phyl & Fred

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