No place like home

 

Leaving the Cohansey, started out with barely a breath of wind.

A suitable addition to my crab pot photo collection.

Headed north toward the C&D Canal, then Delaware City

South of the Canal, looking north and left to the DE side, you can see the 2nd and 3rd bridges that cross the canal ( the 2 white things sticking up over the trees) The Roth bridge on left and St. Georges bridge on right (currently under renovation - 2023)

Going north, on our right is the Salem Nuclear Power Plant, NJ

a breeze picked up, on the nose, but the sun was warm, so we put up our double-sheet around the sunny side of the cockpit.

next, above you can see the first bridge to the left of the water tower, the Reedy Point Bridge.

Perfect name "Purple Hays"

Alas, B Dock of Delaware City Marina at very high tide, but it was going out ( from east to west), so we turned around after this for a port tie. (Best to head into the current for best steerage. Don't even try it the other way.)

Now that we're home, we have time to continue our projects! (Oh goody!) What we didn't get done under way, we can do now like:

• Fine tune the shaft alignment
• replace a deck hatch seal
• reseal the v-berth sides with light varnish
• varnish the cockpit combing
• add a mizzen reefing line for ease of setting anchor sail
• make sure the watermaker self-rinses itself by the right time
• replace some halyards and topping lift lines
• make new secure system for the dinghy on the davits
• got the windlass refurbished and put back in.
• assembled and placed our new 65 lb M1 Mantus anchor on the bow.
• bring the GIANT Bahamas charts aboard
• lube all the million zippers on cockpit enclosure, bags and clothes
• adjust chain locker slide so the chain doesn't pile up, though it will always need a little help with a boat hook.
• Oh, then the clothes packing! Is that a project? You bet it is!

Notes about Projects:

The Windlass

Our powerful Maxwell Windlass was getting worn out again. We've had the brushes refurbished before and it lasted another several years. Fewer businesses are refurbishing machines any more. We were fortunate the same local company was still doing this and improved several parts on it. WE hope it will last another 10 years. The alternative was buying new and they are made in New Zealand. We found out their US warehouse did not have any in stock, so if we ordered one, we might not have gotten it by the time we planned to leave. They are also very expensive - about $5000-6000 dollars.

While it was in the shop, we couldn't "easily" anchor anywhere if we went out for a spin. Turns out we had many projects to do anyway and didn't make any appts to go out. Happy to be home too.

Topping Lift replacement

Don't underestimate the importance of your topping lift, the line that holds up the end of the boom. It sits on the block at the top of the mast in the same place all the time and is exposed to the sun.

We may use them to life a person out of the water with the boom using it, so it needs to be ready and reliable.

We use our mizzen topping lift to lift the outboard on and off the dinghy. It would have been awful if it failed for that, though we always tie a "safety" line to the boat so it won't become an anchor.  our mizzen line was worn halfway through at the masthead point.

The part that is always in the mast was generally in good shape and we'll use that part for something else where new line is not necessary.