Still in Merritt Island, December 9th-18th

Wayne will be telling you later about his ongoing repair challenges but first, the fun things that have happened over the past week-and-a-half:

On December 10th we enjoyed a family gathering to belatedly celebrate Wayne's 65th birthday and his big brother, Howard's, somewhat larger upcoming birthday.  Sister Judy arranged to include brother Harlan and his wife, Patty, sister-in-law Nancy, and Wayne's oldest brother, Howard, with the two of us.  We all gathered for supper out at a local restaurant and then several returned to our "house" for birthday cake on the boat.  It was fun to spend some time with these Thrailkills.  Candles on the cake for the two birthday boys?  Forget it.  We would have burned the place down.  They had to make do with one that sang "Happy Birthday" to them. 


Wayne, Judy, Harlan, Howard

Later that week we got together with Roger and Marcy's family to celebrate their granddaughter Nathalie's fifth birthday.


Happy five-year-old Nathalie

Colleen with Gemini, a very docile great Dane who attended Nathalie's party.

Quilting News

Last Thursday Marcy joined me (Colleen) for a Shop Hop.  This is what quilters call a quilters' shopping trip to multiple quilt shops.  We had great fun visiting three local stores - Sew Central in Merritt Island, Quilting Folks in Cocoa and The Quilt Place in Rockledge. 



The bright, cheery shop at Sew Central

Long arm machines at The Quilt Place work on the
quilting of customers' homemade quilt tops.

We looked at quilting gadgets - you can't imagine the number of specialized tools that are out there just for us, and we browsed through thousands of bolts of beautiful fabric and chatted with enthusiastic shop owners and clerks.






Sample quilts hang from the ceiling of The Quilt Place.  What a paradise!

Then, on Friday morning Marcy and I visited the monthly meeting of Rocket Quilters, the guild in the town of Cocoa, serving this space oriented community around Kennedy Space Center.  This guild is very active - 125 members and a waiting list and lots of quilting activities going on.  We were welcomed with open arms and enjoyed getting to know the guild's members.



Marcy at the guild meeting with Rocket Quilters

 

Another Boating Adventure
Friday afternoon Roger and Marcy joined us on the boat for an overnight trip.  We traveled down the Intracoastal Waterway for about five miles, anchored just off Cocoa Village and fixed a supper of hamburgers, boiled potatoes (made in the rice cooker) and salad.



"Captain" Roger multitasking as he
pilots Cool Change


 

Flat Kate sews with Marcy on the boat.  She is traveling around the country as
part of a geography lesson in our granddaughter Kate's extended day program
in Boston.  Having spent some time in the North Carolina mountains and
with great-aunt Judy in Colorado, she's now wintering with us here in Florida for
a few weeks before heading out to Portland, Oregon. 

The next morning we started up the generator and it quickly overheated and shut itself down.  Once our mechanic had determined that the problem should not be fixed at the anchorage and that we could safely continue our travel, we sat back and enjoyed a beautiful cruise down to the end of Merritt Island on the ICW and then back to the marina by way of the Banana River which runs along the east side of the island.  Merritt Island is a strip of land that starts with the Kennedy Space Center at the north end and runs to Melbourne, FL at the south end.  The Banana River separates M.I. from the beaches and the ICW (the Indian River) separates it from the mainland of Florida.  It's a unique, fragile envirionment and a close-knit community, despite its long, narrow geography.

Merritt Island - our marina is at the top left hand edge of the "A" balloon

Morning on the Indian River



 

Next the Bad News...........

 

We had decided early on to call this year's trip the "people cruise".  But it is beginning to become the "repair cruise".  The problem with the generator turned out to be self-inflicted.  Wayne tested the seacock valve that lets water flow to the generator set when he was replacing the starboard motor impeller.  But....he somehow left it closed.  The result was that the gen set water pump ran dry and disintegrated.  Oh boy, another impeller to replace.  Actually this neglect led us to find that the water hose leading to the pump was ready to fall off because the single hose clamp securing it had corroded in two.  Marine standards recommend two hose clamps on all water and fuel hose so that there is a backup to secure the hoses.  Back at the dock the repair took just a couple of hours as we had a spare impeller onboard and Wayne is highly skilled at impeller replacement by now.

The pump is somewhere here where the belts are.

Carefully capturing all the pieces of the rubber impeller from the generator motor.

Now for the next repair!  During the night whle we were anchored, our water system pump kept coming on every 3 minutes or so.  The deduction - we have sprung a leak in our water system line somewhere.  No big problem when all that will empty into the bilge of the boat is the contents of our 70 gallon water tank.  But it could sink our boat when hooked up to constantly flowing city water at the marina.  Knowing that this would become a real issue shortly, we were attentive for any sound of water inside the boat and planned to tackle this problem on day two back at the marina.  The problem did not wait.  Before we could start the search for the leak, our aft bilge pump came on automatically and pumped on and on.  We turned on the middle and forward bilge pumps and they ran for ten mnutes to empty the bilge.  Lots of Water!!!! 

A search below the master stateroom bed (moving the queen-sized mattress that covers the water heater tank is quite a job in itself) revealed that the hot water heater was leaking at the PVC elbow coming out of the water heater.  When the elbow was touched it just fell apart. It took longer to find the part at Ace and then Home Depot than it did to complete the repair job.

The leak is in the smaller whte elbow at the end of the smaller white tubing.

The nut to the left is supposed to be part of the elbow.

So, just for fun, let's recap our repairs so far this trip:

Replace the bow thruster gear box
Sand and paint the entire bottom of the boat
Starboard impeller replacement
Generator impeller replacement
Doubling of clamps on the cooling system hoses to the gen set after finding a disintegrated clamp
Water system repair

Are we having fun yet?  Sure we are.  The weather is great and we're enjoying the company of lots of interesting people.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you!
Wayne and Colleen