Noank For Repairs
Colby
Saturday, September 25, 2004

It is Saturday, September 25, 2004 and we are in Princeton, NJ where we arrived by yesterday rental car to visit our son, Joshua, Gwen and our newest granddaughter Lila.  What a beautiful baby!!  But, we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s catch up from back in Newport.

September 16-19 MYSTIC ROSE was in the Newport boat show.  There were a number of “Down East Cruisers” in the show.  The term “cruiser” in this context can be a little confusing.  The typical down east cruiser was first developed for the summer people of Maine from lobster boat hulls to be used as a day boat for travel to the islands and up and down the coast.  They were rarely used for longer term living aboard or extensive coastal cruising and were used more like today’s “picnic style” boats.  Most boats we saw were much more Spartan in finish and systems than the boat Steve Zimmerman built for us.

We had rain on the first day of the show and on Saturday the remnants of hurricane Ivan came through with torrential rains.  On Sunday the weather cleared for a beautiful day.  On Monday, September 20^th we moved back aboard from the bed and breakfast.  I had a hard time sleeping ashore.  It was good to be back aboard.

Our Raymarine radar had been broken for most of the cruise so while in Newport we had a technician check it out which resulted in sending the scanner to the factory.  On Monday he was back aboard with the new scanner and discovered that we also had gremlins in the display unit.  There was a very good weather window along the New Jersey Coast predicted for Wednesday and Thursday so we decided to hold off on further repairs and try to make for Cape May during the good weather.

On Tuesday, September 21^st we left Newport for Port Washington, Long Island 120 miles to the west.  The ocean was like a calm lake.   As we passed through Fishers Island Sound to avoid the adverse currents in the Race we slowed from 18 knots to 6 knots to reduce our wake as we passed by fishing boats.  When we tried to come back up to speed the engine wouldn’t go over 1800 rpm and the whine of the turbo charger seemed to have changed pitch.  We were just off the Mystic River so we called the Noank Shipyard and still capable of 8 knots we tied up an hour later.

We looked at the usual culprits that cause loss of rpm by having a diver check to see if we had a net or line around the shaft and all the fuel filters replaced by the yard mechanic.  No joy.  The next day we awoke to the above sunrise view of the mooring field on the Mystic River as we looked east towards Stonington.  We moved to boat around the point to Spicers Marina where a Yanmar technician could check out the engine.  He found the blades wiped on the turbo charger.  A quick check with the factory indicated that it would be six days until we could get a replacement, so much for catching the weather window.  We took the opportunity to send off the radar display so we could have both up for our last leg south.

These events may sound like bad luck but good things started to happen almost immediately.  Carol and Peter King, who live in Noank, led a charter adventure to New Zealand to see the America’s Cup that we enjoyed in January 2002.  We gave them a call after settling in on Tuesday. They had just returned from running a charter in Tonga the day before so we planned dinner that night. Then we received a call from Janet and John Schloss who saw us at the boat show, live in Noank and also were on the New Zealand trip with us.  Soon cocktails were planned for the three couples at the Schloss’ house before dinner.  We walked over the King’s house and when we arrived the their phone rang and two more couples that had been on the trip had just pulled in on a boat just up the river in Mystic Seaport.  One of the couples came from Michigan.  The end result was cocktail and dinner reunion with five couples swapping memories of that memorable trip and catching up on everyone’s latest adventures.  You could not have planned a more successful reunion.

On Thursday, September 23^rd we realized hurricane Jeanne had changed directions and would move north into the area sometime the middle of the next week.  Any ideas of moving south in the next week were gone.  We rented a car at a weekly rate and decided to head home to wait for repairs and a weather window that may follow Jeanne.  We visited Sandy and Greg, long time buddies of Carol that evening in New Jersey.   The next day we visited with Carol’s Aunt Anna who we hadn’t seen for eight years.  She is 90 years old and sharp so off to lunch we went - a great visit.

Later that afternoon we were with Joshua, Gwen and Lila.  You just can’t tell what is going to happen on a cruise.  Today we will be in Annapolis, stop by the house and then have dinner with Pat and Les Adams who will be leaving in a week to take their boat down to Marathon, Florida for the winter.

We have had trouble in the last week uploading log entries to the server but succeeded last night with the hotel WIFI connection.  My next entry will be after bringing the boat down to Annapolis when the weather clears.  Also there is a limitation on the number of pictures the web wizard will allow in the gallery so you may find references to pictures in some of the older newsletters that are no longer in the gallery.  For next summer we will make some improvements in the site based on what we have learned.  Hope you have enjoyed following our trip.

Authors note:  You are reading this log entry on our new website which has no limitations on the number of log entries or photos in the photo galleries.