Windhorse Sailing

They say the devil is in the details. I would be a bit more extreme about that statement. We have made a mad push to get everything in the boat and stowed securely. Yet, the last minute details and thoughts don’t stop, which tends to make one wonder if you got it all done. Did we think of everything? What will be most needed at sea? Food and first aid - that’s easy. How about radio and engine spares? Can we fix anything with our collective experience? We’ll find out. That is what a shake down cruise is all about. But, we have to get to that point first.

When I first arrived in Cape Town Francis told me about a small leak in the bilge. The manifold from the main seacock had a few drips between various pipefittings. Knowing that this small leak was a can of worms I avoided this job for as long as I could. Finally Francis started the job by taking all the pipes out. The former owner, Dirk, had used plastic pipe fitting to avoid electrolysis between the steel hull and stainless fittings. Great idea, but two broke as we separated them. I agreed to do the job of putting them back together. The next day I started by hunting down replacement plastic fittings that had me circumnavigating Cape Town’s suburbs. I found them, installed them and sealed them back in place with a marine epoxy called sicoflex. They leaked less, but they still leak. And the sicoflex makes it harder to dismantle when we do it over. I avoided the job for the next two week as I had too many other things to handle.

A few days ago I came back to the boat to find Francis and Steve tackling the job again. More pieces were broken including the sea cock (the valve that lets sea water into the boat system for cooling the engine, cleaning the head, etc.) Drastic measures had to be taken to prevent water from freely coming in. Francis dove overboard and sicoflexed a piece of plastic over the inlet – a patch on the bottom that was just freshly painted three times. This is the moment when I walked in…and lost it. I asked a few questions and didn’t feel I got the right answers. For all the people I used to work with, you know what it looks like. To put it mildly, I became verbally abusive.

Stevo sent me to cool off so I went to the yacht club bar. That usually isn’t the best idea, but in this case it worked out. Her Majesty’s Sea Dog, Tim from the UK was having some fresh beer when I walked up. He had sold his yacht charter business in the Caribbean after many years and is now retired to his yacht circumnavigating the globe for the umpteenth time. When he saw my face he offered his experience to solve my problem. I told him the story and that I wanted him to teach me patience. The irony of learning patience was left unsaid. He just offered his own story.

“A German I once knew in the UK had come to start a hospital in London. He was impatient and felt that unless he was around nothing got done. He felt everyone was hard to work with and decided to get to the bottom of this problem. He called his English staff together to find out what they didn’t understand. The first question was, ‘Why did you ever leave Germany?’ The rest of the staff applauded.”

Good story - this isn’t NY, it isn’t the NYSE, and I am not at work. Thanks, Tim.

Francis, Stevo and I are all on the same page now. We always were - I just needed a shake down. Now it is time to sail Shangri-La for her shake down.