After leaving Vero Beach on April 1, we made a beeline for Cape Canaveral, where a space shuttle was scheduled for launch on April 5th, weather permitting.

Along with three other boats, Mojo, Moxun, and Nauti RV, we positioned ourselves as close as the Coast Guard would allow to the launch site. The only problem… weather wasn’t permitting. The shuttle launch was delayed again and again, and finally the launch window passed and an indefinite delay was announced. So, we pulled up the anchor and proceeded northbound.

By the way, the “steadying sail” you see is sometimes used on a trawler to steady its motion. We found it cut down a side-to-side roll a good bit when the wind and water wanted to make our ride a bit uncomfortable.

(This lack of luck with launches was repeated every time we tried to stop for a launch. We saw at least 4 launches from far away, but every time we got up close, the launch was delayed. Maybe it was us!) Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a boat. All boats are collections of incomplete projects. Here are a few of the big ones we mostly finished on Dory.

Since Dory became our full time home, we wanted some conveniences that weren’t so important when we were just using her as a vacation home. So despite rumors that we had taken early retirement, we actually started a career in boat plumbing! Here are some of the projects of the past couple of weeks, with most of the dirty work being done by Bill and our friend Seth (aka Roy D.), while Sue dodged flying parts and liquids, kept us in food and clean clothes, moved stuff from place to place to get it out of the way of the plumbing work, took care of the dog, and finally gave up and went to see her sister in Connecticut. Read the rest of this entry »

We installed a fuel polishing system the week before Christmas 2000.

The work was split between Captain Zeb (who had done most of the wood repairs and enhancements on Dory), Captain Bill, and Bill’s son, Bill III.

The biggest problem was not what to do, but where to do it. A GB36 with twin Lehmans and a large old Onan doesn’t have all that much space! The installation itself was pretty straightforward.

The configuration has two groups of manifolds. The simpler one also has vacuum gauges so it’s easy to anticipate when filters need to be changed. This manifold allows me to send all fuel through the F1 (large Gulf Coast Filter) and then through the Racor. I can cut the F1 out of the system if necessary by turning a couple of valves. I can also shut down all fuel flow here if I want. If I want to, I can bypass both filters — probably useful only when transferring fuel from tank to tank. 

Because I want to be able to occasionally see these gauges while underway, I decided to mount this manifold on a bulkhead in the fwd head rather than some place in the engine room. Besides — there just ISN’T space in the engine room!

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