I try to keep this thing pretty positive... I haven't done my "I hate the marine industry" rant on here. But as we all know, the service one receives can often be terrible. I won't get into all the bad experiences here... Well, we got a call from our current marina service manager the other day who had a couple of questions about the work that they had done on the exhaust riser (see a couple of posts ago). Turns out his guys had done the work with the materials they always use and just added the bronze part that I had ordered to that mix. Let me say here that they did a GREAT JOB! But, they used galvanized parts on the rest of the assembly--- Turns out that bronze parts are only another $50 and will last longer. The manager realized what had happened and offered to replace the galvanized with bronze for just the price of the parts- he'll cover the labor, since he feels like it was a mistake on their part. I am thrilled! I'm not so worried about the labor cost, just really impressed with the fact that he thought this was what we would have wanted in the first place, and decided to make it right. Have heart, boat owners-- good service is out there if you look!
I've been taking advantage of the first peek of summer in our area to work on the exterior of the boat. It's been in the 70's and 80's for the past few days. I started out with a good teak cleaning and brightening, then a light sand. I got everything taped and put on 3 coats of Cetol. We don't have much teak on the boat (thank God!), just the stern rail, the washboards, and the grab rails (pictured). I know a lot of people that just let the teak go grey, but I think on this type of boat a little bit of nice teak looks pretty sweet.
I did some of the metal polishing this weekend. There's still more to do, but I got the worst of it done- the rest can wait until cleaning day. We also started pulling the messenger lines and putting all the new running rigging on. It was a great feeling to pull off the wire to rope halyards and kiss them bye bye. The last of the rigging projects for this year is to put in the 2nd level of organizer on the port side. Lewmar doesn't make the same model anymore, so I'm going to have to stack Schaefer on top for now. I'll probably put Shaefer on the first level later- but time is up for major projects for this year!
We also had a rigger come out and start figuring out what needs done this coming fall-- looks like replacement of most or all of the standing rig, strip and paint the mast, and get new life lines. That's going to be some large boat units... 
You know the old Murphy's Law saying, right? "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." Well, as we all know, nowhere is that more true than older boats. After the great finish to the project the other day that found the corroded contacts, the starter turned over just fine. Whew. So when I went back yesterday to do some other work, I thought I'd fire up the diesel and let her run for a little bit--- but the fuel pump had quit working. I followed the wiring from the pump around and down and found a wire that had been spliced into the harness and had a broken terminal on the other end of it. After checking the wiring diagram and seeing that it should be a ground wire, I tested it on the block with the ignition on. Fuel pump went clicky clicky. Whew. So for $0.26 I got a new terminal from the chandlery at the marina and put it back on the block. The engine took a few minutes to start due to the cold, but she fired up just fine and ran like a dream.
Obviously this photo is just a fun pic showing of corrosion, and not what I found on the fuse fitting causing my starter trouble. I will say that I was pretty darned happy when we discovered that we simply needed to clean some corrosion off of a terminal to end the issue. It was a nice day, so I continued to work on another project... I replaced the old Easylock Midi rope clutch with a new Spinlock XAS double. Incredibly, the mounting holes were so close that I just had to drill each 1/16th" over (which I had to do anyway to get my machine screws to fit) and the new clutch dropped right into place. Miracles never cease! Only one more rope clutch left to mount in order to finish up my running rigging refit in the cockpit. I'm pretty pleased with how easy it has been so far.Only a few more maintenance projects for this winter, then it will be time to do a good cleaning and get it ready to go!
Somewhere there is a place where electricity should be traveling--- and it's not. I've asked a friend who is really good with electrical systems and electronics to come and help diagnose and fix our problem. This all becomes greek to me very quickly and my patience runs thin trying to figure it out. We've had intermittent issues with trying to get the starter to turn over in the past and always thought it was a starter issue. I've been doing some diagnosis with the starter as well (again, upon the advice of people with more knowledge than me) and it seems to be fine for now. Although at a replacement cost of less than $200, it will be on the budget for later this year or early next. So we're getting out the multimeter and going to town tomorrow to see where we're losing continuity.In the meantime, I've finished splicing the spin halyard... which leaves the spare and the topping lift yet to do. At $20 per 'eye splice' in the retail market, learning the splicing stuff has already saved me over $100 in the past week or so. And to think the set of fids cost $30... go figure.There are also the last 2 winches to get broken down, cleaned and rebuilt...
