Jim: A slight setback.

The engine is started and running well. The generator is another story. There seems to be a fuel problem with the genny. Tom from Tradewind diesel stopped by today and we did some investigative looking. I believe that a booster fuel pump will be needed to deliver the fuel. We will try that next.

I am still starting on the water system this week. Lets see how that works out.

UPDATE: The booster pump did the trick and we have completed our work on the fuel system, engine and generator.

Cheers,

Jim: Yea, the engine started

We have an electrician sighting, almost as rare as Elvis. Richard from MTS is installing our Raymarine equipment (E80 chart plotter, 4K radar, ST6002, auto-pilot) on our new pedestal guard in the cockpit and an inverter/charger.





The new pedestal guard with two Navpods to
hold instruments.


The radar is aloft.

On a bigger note, after three months of cutting, sawing, grinding, and much fiberglass work, the new fuel system is done. It consist of 2 forty gallon tanks, a duel fuel filter set up, about a million miles of fuel hose, and a "butt-ton" of hose clamps. I bled the system and placed the key in the socket. The old girl turned over in two seconds and purred like a kitten. There was much celebrating and yelling.

Here at Team Helios, we like to celebrate with the traditional bologna sandwich and fruit punch.


My mainstay meal during the rebuild


Another fine meal in our new home.

Now it is off to install a new fresh water system. After the fuel system, it should be a lot easier. I can't believe I just said that.

As a side note, the word Butt-ton was used during the course of this blog. A Butt-ton is a unit of measurement that is more then a "whole lot" but less then a bazillion.

Cheers,

Jim: A Productive Weekend

Another weekend gone. We actually got a lot done. We removed the old radar mount on the Mizzen mast and installed the new Seaview mast mount. Nothing like a little pop riveting 40 feet in the air to make you feel good about yourself. Pat and I work well together when I go up the mast. That is the second time now and no one is dead. Always a good thing.



Me, up the mizzen mast.



Rivets and caulk, ohh baby.

We also made the new wood back plate for our navigation station and Pat attacked the deck in the cockpit. It had a million layers of Cetol varnish on it. With sander, heat gun and scraper in hand, she got 3/4s of it done and looking like brand new wood. There was much sweat. Nothing sexier then a woman with sanding dust all over her and sand paper in hand. UMMMMMM! That's my girl. :-)




The navigation station completely striped.

We had to stain the new oak and add a couple of coats of varnish. Right now varnish coat number one is done and out on our porch drying. The next time we will show the finished product. I would like to say that I oppose varnish on principle, due to it being a bunch of work, but when it is below decks it can last for years. That makes it ok in my book.

Even though we did a lot, we still managed to go into town on Saturday night and have a little ice cream. You have to have your priorities, right?

The electricians are supposed to show up this week and hook up the inverter, and the Raymarine system. Lets keep our fingers crossed.

Cheers,

Jim: Our future base

Back from my trip South. Pat's parents are building a house in St. James Plantation in Southport NC, and we make trips down occasionally to fill up the storage shed. In this wonderful new house is an apartment over the garage that we can use as a base of operations and storage area for all of our possessions while we are gone. It is 45' long by 15' wide (strangely, the same size as Helios).

Dan and Sandy will be the parents-in-residence. Dan is a master carpenter with a wood shop that would make Norm from "This Old House" cry himself to sleep. Sandy is at the top of the Medical Radiation/PET scan field. The house is on the 14th tee of the golf course. A beautiful dog-leg-right with a raised green and a few water hazards (opps, I lost my train of thought). We moved a bunch of tools down along with a very nice pile of old wood.

With this as a base, we should be able to store our stuff here and visit if we are poor and the laundry bag is full and we can no longer afford diesel fuel or sail repairs or food. It is always good to have a plan "B". More to come...

Pat: So much to do, so little time

As you can see by the last post we have a lot of work to do before we leave. To stay within our budget we need to do as much of the work ourselves as possible. It has become a joke between Jim and I that any project we plan for Helios, no matter how large or small, will take 10x longer than expected and require at least two compromises to the original plan. This is hard for a goal oriented, obsessive perfectionist like me.

For example, last weekend we decided to prepare the Nav Station for our new Raymarine high speed switch and VHF. I figured the job would be done in a few hours. How hard would it be to remove some old electronic gear (the old radar plotter, autopilot head unit, VHF) and clean up the unused wire? Well after finding/repairing a leak, removing more wire than you can imagine and a decision to redesign how we mount all the gear at the station, the weekend was over and we were not quite done. It is always just a few more steps and then the job will be finished.

So I am still learning. The experience of the last few months has shown me that if we want to leave in October, we have to prioritize (time and budget) what must be done and leave everything else as projects once we are on our way. I am good with that, well ok, I am working at being good with that.

One successful project was preparing Helios for launch. Here are some pictures starting with Helios on the hard last winter,



Jim getting ready to buff the gelcoat and paint the bottom,



and finally looking good and ready for launch

Jim: About the boat

We bought Helios in September of 2003 in Annapolis. She is a 1977 47' Olympic Adventure Ketch, Hull number 29. Helios was the Greek god of the sun, so we thought it would be a good name for our vessel. She is a Ted Brewer designed boat that was built at the Olympic ship yard in Greece. After Ted designed the Whitby 42, he wanted a little bigger boat that was roughly the same design, except this one had a third cabin for paid crew. I haven't found any "paid crew" yet, but I am beginning to suspect it might be me and the pay will be in rum. She really is a bigger example of a Whitby 42. She was shipped to the Great Lakes region of the US where she had two owners and sailed there for 26 years. Her owner shipped her from Cleveland to Annapolis via truck to sell her.

Just 21 days after we bought the boat, Hurricane Isabel came up the Chesapeake Bay and visited. We rode it out at our slip in the marina. We had winds of up to 65 knots. We didn't get a scratch. Pat even had a conference call during the storm and the folks on the other end kept asking what that noise was in the background.

We are currently at Herrington Harbour South in Friendship, MD. We keep the boat in the water from April to October and store it at Herrington Harbour North in the winter. Since 2003, we have done a lot of work to include:
- All new standing rigging.
- New Quantum sails.
- Leisure furl boom on the main mast.
- Two new 40 gallon poly fuel tanks to replace the 162 gallon iron tank that was leaking.
- New 12 gallon Raritan water heater.
- Fiber-glassed over 4 thru-hulls that were not being used.
- Removed the entire fresh water system (including two 50 gallon aluminum tanks).
- Removed A/C power refrigeration system.
- Fixed damage to the aft section of the keel (no, it was already there).
- Had custom cushions made for the cockpit by "Bottom Siders" (best money we have spent so far).
- Removed all varnish from all topside wood and applied "Tea-Que" oil to the wood. With roughly 300 feet of wood on the top deck, we didn't want to spend all our time varnishing.
- Chased down 4 leaks in the forward and main cabins and killed them with much prejudice.
- Added a custom-made deck box on the aft coach roof to use as a propane locker and deck storage.
- Right now the navigation and radar systems are being installed along with a new inverter to change our D/C battery current to A/C. This will allow us to use A/C power without starting the generator or plugging into shore power. Four new 8d gel cell batteries are also being installed. At 168 pounds each, I needed a little help with that one.

We still have a little ways to go. New water system, fridge, propane line from the bottles to the oven, forward cabin cushions to sew, some diesel engine work to do...
There will always be something. But come late October, we are heading south.

So that is all for now. I will try to drop a line every few days as the work progresses.
No sign of Elvis yet, but there is a little light on at the end of the tunnel.

Cheers,