Houston, We Have a Problem

We’ve learned it’s very dangerous to think that “you’re done with your boat list.” In our last blog post we mentioned getting most of the major projects done on the boat during our one-month stay at the boatyard and that we were beginning to prepare for our 80-mile sail back to Grenada. Then all hell broke loose, so to speak.

When we launched the boat on Sept. 15th we thought we had only one project left:   getting the engine alignment checked. We found, however, that our engine mounts were shot and we’d have to replace them all. Our trusty engine mechanic Falco managed to get four mounts flown in at great expense and began the job of jacking up the engine to remove the old mounts and install the new ones. Not a simple job, but also not rocket science (we’ll get to that later).  While very slowly unscrewing a bolt Falco mentioned it was heating up because of the corrosion on the threads. I said what’s the worse that could happen on this job?  “Having a bolt break off that is threaded into the engine bed," he replied.  "Then you have to remove the engine from the boat (costing a zillion dollars) to drill out the old bolt.” I winced at the thought.

Old motor mount with sheared off top mounting bolt.

About an hour later Falco came around the corner and pointed to a bolt in his hand. “It just sheared off,” he said. I was about to have apoplexy when he added “Oh don’t worry, it’s the top bolt, not the one threaded into the engine bed.”  He then added “but, you had only three bolts holding this heavy diesel in place. One good wave and it could have slide sideways off its mounts, still running. That could tear a hole in the boat.” I was still trying to get over the potential shock of having to remove the engine to drill out the bolt when the image of the boat sinking crept into my head.  Back to work, Falco.

The inevitable surprises weren't over yet. Falco came back holding the new engine mounts. "The bolts going into your engine bed are larger than the holes in the engine mounts, we'll have to have each mount milled out at a machine shop." Oh good, another mouth to feed. Thankfully the rest of the job went smoothly and two days later we had nice new engine mounts and the engine aligned to within .002 inches, a fairly tight alignment. Project One completed.

Project Two. I forgot to mention that when we put the boat in the water and hooked up the outboard to the dingy, I couldn’t pull the starter cord.  I was smart enough to know when to stop and call the outboard mechanic.  He came fairly quickly and it sounded like it would be a fairly simply repair. Most likely salt water had gotten into the drive shaft and froze a bearing that would need to be loosened.  More on that later.

And on to Project Three. When we launched the boat and went to get some water out of the faucet, nothing happened. I discovered that the rather expensive electric motor that drives our water pump had failed. Plan One was to call my go-to guys at Dynamite Marine hoping they knew a local electric motor guy who could fix it, but alas, it was too far gone to be repaired.

Plan Two for Project Three was to find the part locally, but that was also a dead end. Plan Three was to have a local forwarding company, Marine Warehouse, order one from the States and “overnight ship” it.  The cost for the motor ($199 in the States) was $399 using this method, but the shipping was substantially cheaper (about $40) than ordering it from Fisheries Supply in Seattle and shipping it. Also, Marine Warehouse would handle the complicated Customs clearance.

An aside on Customs:  Ironically the cruiser community recently had a big meeting the Minister of Tourism and complained about the circuitous Custom’s regulations and fees.  The very next day Customs made the rules even more circuitous and difficult. Now we’d have to take a $50 cab ride to the airport to “maybe” clear our package, if “maybe” it had arrived and “maybe” if they could find it. Lots of “maybe’s.”

The lady who runs Marine Warehouse in Trinidad lives two boats down from us and every morning I ambushed her to check on my “overnight” shipment.  After a week I started to get worried. She said she’d check. After two weeks I started to get concerned. She said she’d look into it. After three weeks I got pissed. She agreed with me as we both realized FedEx had totally, inexplicably lost my motor. It was probably in Outer Mongolia as far as anyone know.

Now we’re on to Plan Four. I would order the motor through my trusted sources at Fisheries Supply in Seattle and have it drop shipped from the manufacturer in Maryland to our favorite hotel in Houston. We would fly up to Houston, get the motor, have a steak dinner, stay the night and fly back the next day. At least that was the plan.  We quickly got on the phone and tried to get reservations at the Hyatt North Houston, but found it was full (it’s never full) so we booked a room at the Quality Inn. Kind of a plan.

Because none of our plans seem to go unchallenged, we were stymied when we found the marina would not allow us to leave our boat at the dock unattended for even one evening.  After some quick begging and pleading we came to a compromise with them when we arranged for some other cruisers to take responsibility for Flying Cloud while we were gone. One step closer to our elusive electric motor.

On Wednesday, Oct. 15th Meryl and I (both with terrible colds) caught the 8:00 a.m. UAL 1459 flight to Houston. Upon arrival we learned that the Quality Inn didn’t have an airport van to take us to the hotel. No problem, we decided to take a van to the Hyatt, pick up our packages, then catch a cab over to the Quality Inn.

Got to the Hyatt and they had three packages from Amazon waiting for us, but no electric motor (priority overnight shipment) from Groco. In shock, I double checked all the logs of the doorman. No package. Should have been delivered the night before, that’s why we delayed our flight by one day just to make sure.

Fortunately the front desk was able to find us a room so we quickly went upstairs and fired up the computer to check if Fisheries/Groco had finally sent us a tracking number. Yes, there it was. Checking on UPS’s website my knees almost crumbled to the floor when I read “Package refused by recipient and sent back to sender in Maryland.” Un-fricking-believable. Are UPS and FedEx in a global conspiracy to prevent us from having an electric motor?

The next two hours were spent on the phone with several very helpful UPS customer service reps who tried their best to “intercept” the package before it was shipped back, but it was too late. Since the manufacturer was on the East Coast, and it was now after their closing hours, I’d have to contact them in the morning.

On the positive side (Meryl said I have to have positive "feel good" stuff in the blog) we found that the hotel runs a van down to a nearby Walmart store at 6 pm. We took a cab to Walmart at 4 p.m., did some serious food shopping and met the 6 p.m. van for a ride back to the hotel with about 10 bags of groceries. We had to weigh every item in the produce department to make sure we were under our 70 lb. baggage limit. Mission accomplished.

The next morning we made numerous phone calls and got the manufacturer to reship the motor as soon as it arrived back in Maryland. Ugh, that meant we’d have to stay through Saturday since the package would arrive too late on Friday for us to catch the only flight to Trinidad.

As my daughter would say, “why don’t you try to make lemonade out of lemons?” so we decided do some tourist stuff during our extra two days in Houston.  Even though supposedly every rental car in Houston was taken, we managed to score a good deal through our favorite Costco Travel website. Took the hotel van to the airport, got the rental car and headed south down I-49 to I-59 South towards the Johnson Space Center, something that’s been on my bucket list forever. 

The Space Center is a vast 660-acre site where NASA astronauts are trained in nondescript beige-colored buildings and space missions are controlled from another nondescript beige-colored building. We elected to take the Tram Tour that follows a circuitous route around the site visiting the Mission Control Center (where space programs were monitored until 1992), to Building 9 where astronauts are trained, and to the new Saturn V Complex at Rocket Park that houses, wait for it . . . a Saturn V multistage rocket. We would absolutely love to take our grand kids here, they would have a great time.

Mock-up of the Space Shuttle in Building 9.

SAIL, the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory. This is an exact copy of the Space Shuttle so when problems arose engineers in Houston could go to the actual wiring runs and figure out the problem.

Flight Deck of the Space Shuttle. It's amazingly like the flight deck of a Boeing 747.

Actual Mission Control Center where the famous "Houston, we have a problem" message was received by the NASA.
One floor down is the current Orion Mission Control Center.

Astronaut Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11, the first man to step on the moon. "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind"

Air tight box where actual moon rocks are examined by scientists. You can touch an actual moon rock at the exhibit.

Photos showing tight confines of an early space capsule. One astronaut quipped that "you don't actually get in it, it's more like you put it on."

Lunar Rover that was developed by Boeing.

Curiosity is a car-sized rover that is currently exploring the Gale Crater on Mars.

Huge Saturn V rocket at Rocket Park.

Saturn V multi-stage rocket at Rocket Park.

Cheezy photo of us before the Tram Tour. They superimpose various space photos over your image, but it's still kind of cool.

We also spent time viewing various exhibits at the Space Center Plaza, including some great videos of a rocket launch, a Space Shuttle, a Space Station mock-up, the Lunar Rover, and the Mar’s Rover, named Curiosity. All in all it was a great visit, although I felt they could have done a much better job in building a better timeline of space exploration and explaining the milestone events along the way. The best info was from the old-guy docents (who used to work for NASA) and could tell you vignettes about various events.

The next day, with both our colds now in full bloom, we elected to spend a quiet day in the hotel watching TV (I love the Alaska Gold Rush series) and resting. We hovered by the doorman’s station as the 2:26 p.m. UPS truck pulled up and grabbed our elusive electric motor off the pile, then retreated to the hotel room like we’d just scored a huge drug deal.

On Saturday we went to a local IHOP, which although it was in a very sketchy neighborhood, had great service and good food. Then out to the airport early to wait for our 1:00 pm departure to Trinidad.  We had a smooth flight to Trinidad and soon we were in the MiniCab driving towards “boat customs” in Chaguramus to clear our purchases. Luckily nothing aroused their attention and we got the valuable motor safely back to the boat. Very anxious to get the motor installed, have water flowing once again, and prepare to leave Trinidad.