June happenings

 So you are wondering what has happened in our lives since I last wrote. I sanded and stained the deck again this year which really needed it. The garden is a constant, but I think the garden soil I had purchased on a special deal is not of a good deal quality and all potted veggies and flowers could do a lot better. The zucchini have not produced and I see only male flowers on them, so no good. We had a couple of frosty nights and some geraniums suffered and shrunk. And to top it off, we had a hail storm that lasted over half an hour where it pelted down on our poor shrubs. The hail pellets stayed on the ground for a few hours afterward would you believe it. And uptown they didn’t even have rain, only we down here got punished.

The hail just kept coming

yes, the plants suffered under this torment

Even the birds looked for shelter wherever they could

Someone has to do it!

Progress on the boat is ongoing, some ceiling panels were installed, bathroom walls were painted, a new bathroom vent that runs on 12V and solar got put in. The shower mixer and shower head were hooked up and the floor is currently being worked on. 

Also Albatross has a hydraulic steering system like most boats. This system was manufactured in Australia and is actually a well known quality brand. However here in Canada and in the USA it is lacking a spare parts supply. In the future we would like to add a hydraulic autopilot that can steer the boat to a GPS waypoint that we pre programmed. But, to our dismay, our hydraulic system had a pressure leak which spilled some hydraulic fluid at a non accessible location. Using his flashlight Benno located the leak on a coupling between two hydraulic Nylon high pressure tubing pieces from the steering pump to the rudder cylinder. To fix that we had to pull out the hydraulic tubing line but after inspection we decided to replace both lines und use fitting and tubing from the American Seastar Steering System that is widely available throughout North America. That will simplify the installation of the Autopilot as well.

a bit cramped access under the cockpit

The leaking culprit: A coupling

If you look at the width of the compression rings:
top=small, middle=bigger, bottom= nice large size
top: is the leaking hardware store unit
middle: the Australian Hydrive original which is okay
bottom: the new American SeaStar unit

Once we had pulled out the old hydraulic tubing and Benno found the culprit of a leaking coupling, he noticed that the compression rings were not Australian or American types, but probably came from a hardware store that supplies airlines for compressors and it could not handle the steering fluid pressure. When the new hydraulic tubing and associated fittings from Seastar arrived, I gave Benno a hand to feed the new lines in, which was a finicky job.

feeding the stiff and coiled hydraulic lines

This is the tool to cut the hydraulic Nylon tubing

Last Saturday we participated in the town-wide Yard Sale. We had quite a pile of accumulated stuff. Most people sold from their yards and garages, but we are more remote located and likely would have not too many people come out. We asked to set up on a vacant land in town where the Mennonites had set up several tables and they also had hot dogs on a grill for sale. Turned out we made a good choice and are happy that almost everything we had was sold.

We are supposed to have some hot weather coming our way, so boat related work will have to be done in the early morning hours before the heat in the boat starts baking us. 

Hoping everyone is having a great summer. Thanks for dropping in again.