A “storm” of a different sort.

It’s Sunday morning  and I should be on my way for Hampton VA by now, but I’m not…

In boating it’s always something.  In this case, it’s several somethings.  Of course, right now it would be easy to blame my delays on the weather with the powerful hurricane Joaquin, working his way up the coast.  However, it’s not just about the weather that’s keeping Pandora on the hard.   Unfortunately, it’s about a “storm” of a very different sort.

In my last post, I wrote about a problem with the bow thruster.   Well, it’s as bad as I had feared, perhaps worse.  It seems that those “floods” in the thruster compartment, the ones that happened prior to my owning the boat, have taken their toll on the unit.  And now, the “hinge” that allows the thruster to go up and down into the hull, is plenty corroded.  The plan WAS to pull the “pins” that the unit pivots on and clean them up so that the unit pivots more easily.  Ooops! Easier said than done!   When Ben Franklin said “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” he must have been thinking of a problem like this one.  I’d say that it’s going to take pounds to fix what ounces would have prevented.   Sucks for me…

So, after fussing with the problem for much of a day the “bow thruster guys”, and they ALWAYS travel in pairs, couldn’t make the pin budge, even a little bit.  So now, the plan is for me to lube them up a few times a day and hope that they free up by Monday when the “team” returns.  Boy, do I hope that it makes a difference.  I was really counting on this not being a huge job.  “Good luck with that Bob, it’s a boat.”

When they came to work on the now infamous hinge pin,  it looked like they were setting up shop for the long haul.  Love the tent.  Like a couple of kids building a fort.  However, these “kids” are getting paid plenty.  So, after a few days of my “lubing” very few hours, I am not very confident that the problem will be solved easily.  What am I saying is that “easy” has already left the room.   The next option will be to remove much of the unit and take it back to the shop and press the hinge pin out with a hydraulic press.  Sounds expensive?  You bet…

It gets worse.  The guys stayed late that evening trying to get at least the bilge pumps installed in the thruster compartment.  I guess that they were tired after a long day.  I sure was.    Well, when I arrived the next morning to inspect the work, I was horrified to see that they had installed the bilge pump outlet right in the middle of the side of the hull.   It looks like a Frigging ostomy hole, RIGHT IN THE SIDE OF THE HULL!!!  There were a number of other options he could have done and one that would have been INVISIBLE.  Ugh…

Fixing this is going to be complicated.  The designer and builder worked hard tol design things so that there are no thru-hulls on either side of the hull, only at the stern.  The rest go into vertical standpipes that are glassed into the inside of the boat.   I think that it’s got to be removed and the hole patched but matching the paint?  It’s not going to be easy, even though it’s a stock color.  I guess it’s best to wait till the job is further along and then I’ll readdress the “Ostomy Hole” with him. What was he thinking?

So, with Pandora on “hold” and the weather all sorts of nasty, I feel like Pandora’s embroiled in her own personal storm.  Let’s hope that things settle down aboard Pandora as quickly or at least as soon as the ocean swells subside from our buddy Joaquin.