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 What'ca making?
 Sweet doggie
When we got to the boat at 4am last Friday we heard a loud thumping. I did some initial investigation and found that there was nothing obviously wrong. I had my suspicions that it might be the rudder post. We went to sleep with the intent to locate the source later in the weekend. On Sunday night the wind was blowing again and I was able to capture this video. It shows how the rudder arm is not firmly attached to the rudder stock. I am still not sure what the clicking noise is, I think it could be a part of the autopilot. This picture shows the same area. The rudder arm has a single set screw coming in on a flat side, this will never be able to tighten the arm enough to prevent movement. At a minimum there would need to be two screws on that side. I believe the decision to put the screw there was based on the need to keep the the U shaped lobes clear. These are, I believe, for the emergency tiller. I have not confirmed this but there is a gadget that looks like it fits there.
After conferring with my brother, who knows as much about mechanical stuff as I know about technology, a solution was found. The rudder arm will be removed and two new holes will be drilled and tapped. One will be in the lobe opposite the arm and the other on the perpendicular side from the existing screw. The screw in the lobe will be an Allen head set screw, this will allow the lobe to be used for it’s design purpose. This will push the rudder stock into the corner providing a tighter fit. The other two provide additional support.
Monday night, the day after Christmas, we were visiting with Nana and the Carbon Monoxide Poisening detector went off. We reset it, and it went off again. We changed the batteries, and it went off again. Not wanting to be chicken little we called the local Fire Department and they told us that because the detector was over 5 years old, that it could be providing an inaccurate reading. We went out, bought new ones, put them up and no more warnings! YAY!!! In case you don’t remember, we were on TV about 5-6 years ago, because we did have Carbon Monoxide in our home. If we did not have a detector… It was a cold winters night, right before christmas, and we were getting ready to go out of town and our detector went off. We reset it, and it went off again. We called local Fire Company, they said dial 911. We were like, noooooo… We called 911. They told us to take the animals and get out of the house, open the windows, and wait in your car until we arrive. We followed their instructions and they came, we all ended up going to the Emergency Room to check our levels, and we were safe. Here’s what happened: Our Furnace was natural gas, and the filter had not been changed in a while, and it caused a crack in the furnace, and Carbon Monoxide was poisening us. The morale of this story is… We were lucky, we had a detector that was active and it saved our lives. If we hadn’t we may have been that family who never woke up the next morning, or ended up in the hospital very sick. Needless to say, please if you don’t have one already, go and get one, they are worth their investment in gold, especially if it saves your life. |
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