Ready for anything

We’ve been busy since Selkie was put back in the water on July 26. 

We had her recommissioned by a technician at the yard where she spent the winter, as sitting in storage for 10 months can be hard on a boat. 

We had some work done while in storage:

• New bottom paint
• Wax and polish the hull
• Change the oil on the transmission and genset
• Repaired the air conditioning unit for the berth and pilot house (we thought we may need to buy a new one, but thankfully they found the problem and fixed it)
• Repairs to the dinghy where a lifting eye had broken, making it difficult to launch the dinghy
• Other necessary annual maintenance I was not able to complete before departing Selkie last fall

Selkie came out of storage and into the light of day looking great.  She was set in the water… and she floated!  (One’s mind can run away with ridiculous thoughts if one thinks about things too much…)

The mechanic who recommissioned her went through her systems.   

He did a great job and made sure everything started. 

The generator took a bit to get started as she needed to have her injectors bled of air, but it finally kicked in with a bunch of smoke and started up.  It runs well now.

We paid the final bill and departed Cheboygan for Mackinaw City where we had reservations for a week to get Selkie provisioned and where I planned to do some updates for her.

Leaving the Cheboygan River, we noticed that the depth finder wasn’t working. The indicator read, “- – – “.  Basically, we could not tell how deep the water was, something you don’t want on a boat like Selkie.

We turned around and called the yard to let them know we were coming back in. They were waiting for us when we pulled in. 

They pulled Selkie back out of the water and checked to make sure the depth finder transponder had not been painted over. 

It hadn’t. 

They then got some folks looking in the engine room, and found some loose wiring, which they fixed.  But there was still no depth indication. 

They looked further and realized there was a “through-hull” depth finder, which means the transponder is inside the hull, not outside the hull. 

The through hull transponder is supposed to sit in a little tank of glycol (also called antifreeze), which is next to the hull. The signal from the transponder shoots through the tank of glycol, through the hull, to the bottom of whatever body of water you are floating in where the sound is bounced back up to the transponder and the depth is read.

As it turned out, the glycol was low in the tank so that the transponder could not shoot signals through the hull, hence the reading of “- – -“.

Once the glycol was added, the transponder worked fine, and we had a functioning depth finder.

We left Cheboygan a second time, and continued without incident the two hours it took to get to Mackinaw City. 

It was like Selkie picked up where she left off.  She ran great.

In Mackinaw, I did a few things to update her.  The updates:

Broken Windshield Wiper:  During our trip, one of our windshield wiper arms broke off.  I replaced it after some effort to remove some old parts that were frozen in place.

Blower:  The engine room blower was starting to fail; you could sense a lot of bearing vibration in the blower when it was on.  A blower is critical to keeping fresh air in the engine room, and also keeping any noxious fumes from accumulating while under way.  I replaced the blower.  It’s much quieter now.

Horn:  Selkie’s horn was a problem.  It worked intermittently, and when it did sound, it was rather like an old man passing gas instead of a bold sound from a ship’s horn.  I replaced the horn, but only after a lot more difficulty than it should have taken.  Long story short: it took a day of frustration, but we have a new horn.

After working on getting all the above tasks done, we took a quick little tour of the Straits with Libbie’s sister.  It’s always fun to take folks to tour the Mackinac Bridge from an angle most people don’t see.

For those who don’t know, the Mackinac Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world when it was finished in November 1957, spanning the five miles wide Straits of Mackinac between the lower and upper peninsulas of Michigan.

As we return to the harbor, an alarm came on, one we hadn’t heard before. 

A quick survey of Selkie showed that the Low Voltage Alarm was on, but only on the flybridge, and only intermittently.  We successfully docked, and did a little trouble shooting that proved inconclusive. 

We called the yard where Selkie spent the winter, and they sent a technician up the next day.  As it turned out, it was the same technician we worked with to get Selkie commissioned after her long winter. 

He arrived, and went through all the electrical systems.  I’m glad he did as I discovered some things that had been questions in my mind.  Making a long story short, he discovered a couple of loose connections, and then tested everything.  Selkie was fine. 

Whew.

We were in Mackinaw until August 2, when we resumed our journey by spending a night on Mackinac Island before heading north and east to Canada.

It’s been a long 10 plus months to get to this point.  A lot has happened to us in that time. The top of that list of things that happened is a new granddaughter!

So… we are ready.  We need to be, as we will be on Selkie for the most part until next May when we plan to cross our wake in Solomons, Maryland. 

We have a lot of ground to cover before that.

Like around 4,000 miles of ground. 

It will be a great experience.  We are ready, and so is Selkie!