Packing for Charleston

My friend Major and I will haul Ms. Bettencourt tomorrow and trailer her over to his house for loading and final checks before departure. We plan to leave about 0900 Tuesday and to return Saturday.

Notable events since the last post include replacement of both 12V batteries, one of which was 8 years old and the other 7. They still worked, but why take chances?

I also replaced the push-button intermittent switches on the dash that control the engine glow plugs and the horn. And, since I was into the electrical panel, I also replaced skimpy 18 gage wiring in the glow plug circuit with 8 gage wire. That change has made a BIG difference. Before the re-wiring, a cold start might require 30 to 45 seconds of glow plug current. Now, I'm consistently getting strong starts in 15 seconds.

Did I mention the horn? Oh yes, I not only replaced the horn button and the wiring, but also the whole danged under-powered electric squeaker.

I found a neat single-trumpet air horn on Amazon for an irresistible price. It came with a little compressor that  fit nicely under the dash. It is now possible to hear Ms. Bettencourt a mile away.









So here's the plan for this cruise: We will trailer to Beaufort, SC, launch the boat at Lady's Island and spend the night in the Beaufort Downtown Marina.

At Ms. Bettencourt's 6-knot cruise speed, it's an 11-hour run up the ICW from Beaufort to Charleston. So we will be leaving Beaufort before sunup Wednesday, running a few hours in the dark so as to arrive in Charleston Harbor about dusk.

Major will conn the vessel while I start the 1000-watt Honda generator and fire up the microwave for coffee and a power breakfast.

Meanwhile, Ms. B is scrubbed down, fully fueled, ready to haul out and roll. The weather forecast appears to be promising. It should be a good trip.

Home again

Ms. Bettencourt's lengthy overhaul -- May 19 to August 7 -- has finally concluded. She's back at her dock, sparkling white inside and out, and ready for her next trip.

My friend Major and I plan to trailer the boat to Savannah sometime in October, then cruise to Beaufort, SC, Charleston, and return.

Dates will be set soon.






Meanwhile, we have a new  cruiser in the neighborhood. She acts like she owns the river.

It is unusual to see alligators in this part of the Savannah River. This one has been hanging around my next-door neighbor's dock for about a month. She appears to be about six feet long from snout to tail tip.



I think this one feeds on fish, turtles,snakes and -- perhaps -- an occasional dismounted wakeboard rider.

(I have noticed that the wakeboard and water ski traffic has diminished considerably in the last few weeks).

Moving along

My friend Paul came down to the warehouse with me yesterday morning to help haul Ms. Bettencourt out on the pad for a scrub down.

A lot of sanding dust came off in the wash. Next, I'll be masking the window gaskets, rub rail and assorted fittings in preparation for spot priming.

The boat looks kind of strange to me without its teak cabin top rails, anchor platform and forward railings.

Paul Creighton photos

Also on the list of stuff to do is touching up various scrapes and dings on the hull. That big scrape is from running over a wing dam downstream last April. The only damage was paint removal. The hull is 8 mm thick in this area. The gelcoat under the antifouling paint was hardly scratched.



(You can click on a photo to see more detail).


The weather forecast is for some (relatively) cool weather over the next few days. I hope to get a lot done during that period.

Too much heat, too little light

But work is proceeding on Ms. Bettencourt's topside paint job anyway. Light is a problem. The one-part epoxy Interlux primer and Brightside finish coat paint I will be using cannot be applied in direct sunlight. There are no functioning overhead lights in the building. I have found that if I arrive on the jobsite before 9 a.m. EDT, I can get only barely adequate working light on the boat's starboard side.

Here's what it looked like in the old building at 0840 on a recent morning. Both 12-foot roll-up doors were open.









Outside the building at about the same time of day looked like this. East is to the right in this photo. This patch of shade was largely gone by noon, at which time the temperature was 91F. Humidity is usually stifling by this time of day too.

So, surface preparation work continues inside. The Interlux Surfacing Putty seems to be working well as a filler for deck and cabin tops imperfections. It does not shrink too much and is relatively easy to sand.



Because of the light situation, I often find myself working with a shop light in one hand and an electric sander or a paint scraper in the other. This technique is a little dicey when standing on a ladder, but I am making progress nevertheless. Most of the pre-painting work is complete.

One early morning in the next few days, I expect to hook the trailer up and haul the rig out into that little patch of transitory shade. That will give me a space to hose off the sanding dust and inspect the work in better light. While it's outside, I'll scrub the spots on the hull that need touch up painting.

After that, the process will be to paint outside while the shade lasts, then push back into the inside bay where the day's paint can dry overnight. Then pull her out the next morning, paint in the shade, then push her back -- for as long as it takes to finish the job.



Work days will be short, so I have no idea at this time how many in-out-in cycles be required.

Did I mention that this building is unoccupied? It is at the end of a long dead-end road with a levee on one side and dense river bottomland jungle on the other. It is a spooky place to work alone.

Which is all the more incentive to get 'er done.



.

If anyone has been curious ...

... about the inactivity on this site, here's an explanation: Ms. Bettencourt is on the hard in an unused warehouse not far from the river. The cabin tops and decks need to be repainted. Over the last couple of months, I have stripped off  her deck rails and hardware and sanded all loose paint from the weather decks.

Much of the exterior teak is in the shop at home, getting refinished (ever so gradually).

The average daytime temperature around here for the last month or six weeks has been in the 90s. Motivation to work diminished as temperatures went up. Also, it is lonely in that warehouse and I can only listen to NPR on my portable radio for so long. Those are my excuses, and I'm sticking with them.

I did work for a couple of hours early this morning before knocking off around 10 to pick up friends and make it to the Fourth of July barbecue at the American Legion Post. This morning's work consisted of repairing fiberglass injuries on the cabin tops. I am using a product that's new to me: Interlux Surfacing Putty. It goes on easy enough.  Yet to be determined is how easy or hard it sands and how much it shrinks when it dries.

If things go as expected, I'll be back on the job tomorrow. I hope to finish the surface prep and priming in another week or 10 days.

The light in the warehouse is very poor, even with the two 12-foot roll-up doors full open.

 It may be necessary to pull the rig outside to see well enough to apply the top coats of paint, then to push it back into the warehouse quickly after each coat so the finish can dry in the shade. This work will have to be done between sunrise and about noon, after which the warehouse shadow on the outside area in which I will be working will give way to blistering hot direct sunlight.

The  target date for trailering the boat to Savannah is July 28.

That may be optimistic.

Marooned (probably forever)

Army Corps of Engineers divers were at the New Savannah Bluff Lock and Dam this week. They spent most of a day underwater around the lock wall on the Savannah River side of the lock.

U.S. Army Corps of  Engineers photo

There has been no official word on findings, but a person I know who is close to the action said the engineers she talked with sounded "really worried."

The lock was closed indefinitely Thursday. There are currently no plans to repair and re-open the lock. Augusta's river access to the sea is closed.






I went to the Augusta Ports Authority meeting Thursday and no one seemed to be particularly concerned.

Sighhhh....

Not since Sherman seized Savannah

Here’s an epochal development in the history of Augusta that seems to have completely escaped the attention of our political leaders and local media:

For the first time since the capture of Savannah by Union forces in 1864, Augusta’s river access to the sea is to be cut off. And this time, it sounds like it will be permanent.

On May 8, the Army Corps of Engineers posted a notice on its “Balancing the Basin” internet blog, http://balancingthebasin.armylive.dodlive.mil/2014/05/08/nsbld/ The post begins with the following paragraph:

“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District and the City of Augusta, Georgia, will close all access to a portion of the New Savannah Bluff Lock and Dam on May 15 due to safety concerns with the aging structure. Operation of the lock will also end May 15.”

The Corps of Engineers drawing at right details problems with the downstream end of the lock wall. You might want to click this image to enlarge it.

In addition to closing water access to the Port of Savannah, this act turns Augusta’s part of the Savannah River into a skinny 13-mile-long lake.  This lake is impounded only by the aging, and now officially unsafe, dam that no one seems to have any plans to repair.

Three major consequences come immediately to mind:

•  Water supplies for the cities of Augusta and North Augusta, plus all the industries along the reach from Augusta to the dam are threatened by unabated deterioration of the dam.

•  Prospects for a revival of river commerce to and from Savannah’s growing port are extinguished.

• River tourism, including development of Augusta as a large pleasure boat destination for vessels using the River between Augusta and the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway at Savannah is no longer feasible.

Then there’s the matter of all the large boats moored between the dam and the end of upstream navigable waters. 

By my count there are more than 50 such vessels with lengths between 34 and 60 feet parked along the river between Gum Swamp, SC, and the Augusta Marina. These boats live in the water. They are too big to trailer.

In the past, many have gone to marine facilities in Savannah for major out of the water repairs and maintenance.  In the future, out of water maintenance and trips to the coast will have to begin with expensive boat moving contractors using cranes and other specialized equipment.

These vessels are effectively marooned.

All of these developments should not come as a surprise to our political leaders. The U.S. Congress, in the Water Resources Development Act of 2000, authorized the Corps of Engineers to rehabilitate the lock and dam and turn it over to local governments for operation. At that time the cost was estimated to be about $24 million. The money was never appropriated.

Since then, it seems to me, our political leaders, both locally and in Washington, have done nothing to get the money and start the work to fix the lock and dam. I am hopeful that this week’s lock closure will be a wake-up call for citizens and decision-makers to get a process started to save our access to the sea.

Yesterday, a friend who will be 98 years old next October, told me when he was a boy, well before the lock and dam was built, it was not uncommon to be able to walk across the Savannah River at 5^th Street during summer droughts. “It was just a trickle,” he said, “you could jump across it.”

I have no doubt that, without some organized and passionate intervention to repair the structure, the lock and dam will continue to deteriorate to eventual catastrophic failure.

“Just a trickle” of Savannah River at 5^th Street could be in our future.

Ms. Bettencourt, however, is free to ride her trailer anyplace I care to pull it. However, I am saddened by the river closure and the likelihood that the trip we made from my dock to the sea last month will be the last such voyage for the old girl and for me.