Century Club: mike pitchford

Isaias had just passed.  The storm had spoiled yet another plan to celebrate my wife's birthday.  After COVID-19 changes and now weather changes we were on plan "f" I think.

On the morning of her birthday we lost power.  It would be out for 30 hours.  We couldn't even get our little Key west launched because the lift had no power.  

By noon the storm had mostly cleared Annapolis.  Friends on the creek came to the rescue.  They ordered a fine take-out dinner and picked us up on their boat for a socially distant group dinner on their deck.  

A quick cocktail cruise with a purpose.  Shelley Rubin was celebrating her birthday. At a social distance her children and grandchildren joined her in the back yard.  Friends conspired for a surprise happy birthday boat parade complete with signs and horns blowing.    

The new to us Legacy 32 has had $100k worth of refit work over the winter (series in Proptalk on this).  Freshly launched and cosmetically beautiful, she still has plenty of work required.

First we need to clean her, mostly inside.  While serious woodwork and paint shop time over the winter fixed years of neglect outside, the inside was just as neglected, dirty at least.  Also, there were lots of small things, the solenoid to the head, the float switch to the HVAC sump pump, storage to cerate and more.  And did I mention cleaning...

Once we get that done we need to load her up for cruising.  The former boat was a 46' trawler.  The downsizing, in terms of gear, clothing etc, will be a challenge.

Anyway it will be 13 days of boat work every day to get her ready for our first cruise to Chestertown (a social distance cruise sponsored by the Annapolis Yacht Club). So I will take advantage of the Century Club option to count boat work days and log ten!

Years ago I had a small sailboat, an Oday Daysailer. I bought it used in 2000 and kept it at our North Carolina lake house. The idea was to get my boys interested in sailing. Never happened. Once they had the speed of a Sea Doo, also at the lake house, they never looked back.
 

Anyway, we brought the Daysailer with us when we traded the lake house for our new waterfront house in Annapolis. It resided on a lift and got very little use. I was always to busy with work or house projects to sail it and the boys were still into power boat speed.
 

Somewhere around 2010, I gave the Daysailer and trailer to my brother Patrick. He had a North Carolina canal front house he shared with my sister and brother in law, both sailors.  Best I can tell, it never got used.
 

My sister in law, Kate, wrote me an email a month or so ago about the Daysailer. It had been stored outside at one of their Norfolk rental properties, for years. I decided to repossess it and make it a restoration project.

Another brother, Jim, went over and assessed the boat and trailer.  He managed to get it out of the weeds, pumped up the dry rotted tires and moved it over to his house. On Friday, my wife and I drove down to Norfolk to get it. I brought two new tires and a new light wiring kit, knowing for sure the trailer also needed rehab.
 

At Jim's house and with Jim's help we changed the tires and installed the light kit. The wheel bearings needed attention especially one of them, which made some rumbling noise when it turned.  Long ago my dad had trained me on trailer axles and wheel bearing repacking. I think we did this on the old Apache camper trailer they owned.
 

Anyway those skills and that experience came in handy. We cleaned out the one noisy bearing and it clearly needed it. Brother Jim found an ancient grease gun in his garage and it was perfect for adding grease and repacking the bearings.
 

The boat made the trip home to Annapolis on Saturday with no problems! 
 

Thanks dad!