September 2002 - Month of Maintenance

Finally, the summer heat is starting to abate. I am looking forward to crisp but sunny days and cool, easy sleeping nights. We spent 10 days on the hard (hauled out) in Deltaville, VA. We had the bottom sanded and painted for the first time in 2 years. It was definitely time, as we had been getting progressively slower over the past few months. In the Newport, RI anchorage, a neighboring boat asked us over for drinks. When I glanced over to our boat and commented that Tigger needed a bottom job and some sprucing up - we were looking kind of scruffy - the couple agreed with me with more enthusiasm than was really required.

While hauled out, an inspection showed that we needed a new cutlass bearing and that the prop itself needed to be replaced - it was pitted and rough. So we treated Tigger to a new three bladed prop. We now go faster under power than ever before. It remains to be seen what the combination of a newly painted bottom, which will let us go faster, versus the drag of a three bladed prop, will do to our speed under sail.

Since Tigger is 26 years old, there is always plenty of maintenance to attend to. We waxed and buffed the hull and I scraped and painted the anchor windlass. We rearranged the lazy jacks for about the 10th time. With the very extreme roach on the New Zealand built mainsail, the sail is too big to drop neatly with the existing lazy jack plan. We put off many small projects while having fun this summer - we just made a list. Well, the list came due at this haul out.

Deltaville is located at the end of a point of land along the Piankatank River, just off the Chesapeake Bay, in a rural part of Virginia. The Deltaville Marina loans bikes to their patrons, and we took many long bike rides past farm fields of pumpkins and cantaloupes. The fields of corn were burned and lost to the ongoing draught in Virginia. Even with good September rains, there is still water rationing. But the huge oak trees and the forest scrub still looked healthy and green and were twined about with honeysuckle vines sporting white blossoms. The fragrance was lovely. Along the roadside and among the tangle of weeds, the morning glories bloomed a deep purple-blue.

August 2002
September 2002
October 2002
November/December 2002
January 2003
February 2003
March 2003
April 2003
Summer 2003
Winter 2003-2004