So Mary Lee made it almost halfway to Charleston before we ran into trouble. There we were....squeezing past the low water by McClellensberg just a couple hours before low tide. Doing fine...Sloooww...but okay. 3.5 miles south of McClellensberg, the engine suddenly slows like it is throttling down....and quits. Oh Boy!!!  I run forward and drop the anchor.

Guessing we were already blown over into the mud before the anchor hit bottom. So the next step was to gander at the engine. Alternator bracket had broke. Knocked a hole in the oil filter and of course, oil everywhere. Great!!! A couple of weeks before I moved her to Johnson's marina, Georgetown landing had called, someone wanted to buy her. Don't think I never thought of that.
  It is what it is. While waiting for tow boat U.S.

We took a selfy. What else can you do?

While waiting for our two. We watched a storm roll in from the south. Noticed the leading edges swirling a lot.

Our tow boat was a couple hours late. They ended up outrunning a cyclone and beaching the boat.

Eventually we got dropped off at Leeland Marina in McClellenberg.

Vivian made a friend.

Who made sure I tied off correctly.
Turns out we really enjoy the people here. Small town and down to earth.

View off the stern was of the shrimp boat fleet.

Vivian truly is a good sport. Neither one of us has had a lot of boating enjoyment out of Mary Lee yet.
So instead of sailing on July 4th....we drove up to Georgetown and watched the fireworks before going home. We have had quite the heat wave. Working on boat would need to wait a bit.
So...I did a little research. It turns out that Universal engines are notorious for the alternator brackets breaking. The advice given was to replace with better or buy a new engine.
I went back down to clean the oil out of the bilge and while there I changed the filter, refilled the oil and the engine started. Could not run more than a minute or so until all put back together. It was a little rough at cold idle but seemed to smooth out okay when throttled up. I may have got lucky.
While at it...

I get to fix the bilge pump hose. Turns out the previous owner must have found a second hand bilge pump that took 1" inner diameter hose. Hose on boat was 3/4 inch inner. He just shoved the smaller hose into the larger hole and called it good.

That has been all the hold up on Mary Lee. I have found nothing that was not cobbled together on the whole boat. Every single thing worked when I bought her. Every single thing was cobbled together in a way that made the fact that anything worked kind of a miracle.
You have heard the saying about opening up a can of worms? I bought one. Not complaining. I was in much pain and on really strong pain pills when I bought her. It was about fighting to get my life back.
I have come a very long ways. I know quite a lot about the different systems on a boat. Eventually we will move up in size. I will never trust a surveyor again. I have had two surveys. One when I bought her. The other when I got boat U.S. insurance. They both missed several things. But...I did get to see how they do their job.

I will survey myself when we eventually move up in size. My rule. I do not care so much that a boat needs some things freshened up...or even an engine built. The price will reflect that. But if I spot cobbling caused by an owner slapping something together wrong just to save money.....I walk away.

So hopefully I get Mary Lee to Charleston next weekend. One together, I will fire her up. Put in gear and throttle up. She can stay tied to the dock for no less than an hour while running. Hopefully I am not building another engine. Likely have less than a hundred hours on this rebuild. Funny thing is. If I had opted to stay in Baltimore for one last winter, I could have done some sailing right after engine build. Then sailed most of the next summer before heading south.

I would have been sailing...but would not have met Vivian. There is no question that she has filled a hole in my life.

Maybe someday I can take her sailing?? ;-)
In the meantime... Have you ever seen a monkey fist knot?

They are used for tying a weight on the end of a line to help one throw a line up to a ship from the dock. Of course, a lot of people think that using a one inch steel ball in it and a long lanyard is the modern equivelant of a mace. A sap??
 Whatever. I thought they make a nice keychain. Heavy weights wear out ignition switches. I mostly just wanted to learn a new knot.

Learned it. Mine have a rubber ball in them. Well...the big one is a baseball. The larger white one has a ping pong ball. I did a couple with an unbreakable fishing bobber.
 I found these motion activated owls in dollar tree. A box full of obnoxious sounds.

Thought Vivian would distribute them amongst her co-workers. Nothing doing. They are boxed up in closet :-)

  The end of a very busy week.
 When I rebuilt the engine on Mary Lee, there was much rust from a cracked exhaust spraying water and apparently the raw water pump had also been spraying salt water on the front of the engine. It was a chore getting the oil pan and timing cover off. The bolts were rusted so badly that the heads no longer had flats for a wrench to attach to. Mostly used vise grips. Some had to have flats ground on to them so the vise grips had something to work on. Penetrating oil was needed for most of it.

So what does that have to do with this week?

Oil pan developed a leak after 2 years. At first I thought I had a problem with the rear seal. Oil seemed to slowly drip from back side. (Turned out it was slowly oozing and running to back of pan before dripping)I have felt almost sick from the physical therapy for so long it was beyond me to mess with it. Stopped therapy a couple months ago and am feeling much better. Gazelle seems to do a good job of working out knots in lower back. As long as I get on it before the pinching gets out of hand. Certainly not negating what the therapist did for me. He gave me a big jump on getting my life back.

So it turned out, all that rust I thought I had eliminated when putting engine together was not gone. A pin hole developed behind the oil plug. I cleaned it up very well, after draining oil. Then applied this fantastic epoxy by jb weld. A friend had used it on an engine block years ago and it was still holding.

So I bought some.

And after using the drill to wire brush the paint and rust off. Deep cleaning with acetone and sanding a little bit. I put it on. Three days later after running engine up to operating temperature. There is no leak. It got a coat of rustoleum yellow to match. The picture is taken with a mirror under it to show repair. That was one job this week.Truthfully, I like the idea of a new oil pan. Not pulling the engine to do that unless this patch does not work.

I also pulled the exhaust out to see how it was holding up. I had built one out of 1-1/4 inch galvanized pipe in Baltimore. It had a break back when the original bent prop was still on it. New prop and cutless flange cured the evil vibrations that caused the break. Exhaust was good to go. That job was about peace of mind on the trip.

Yesterday I rebuilt toilet.

It was not flushing very well. Who knows when it was ever rebuilt before.

I brought it home when I saw how scored up the cylinder walls were. It needed some honing.

I used my wheel brake cylinder hone and a bucket of water. Not much different than honing a cylinder on an engine block except on the engine you use a squirt bottle to spray soapy water into cylinder while honing to keep the stones clean and lubricated. The end result is the same. The score marks need removed if you expect a good seal. It turned out well. Finished clean up and assembly.

One more project successfully finished.





Vivian bought a small power washer for washing boat and stuff around house.

Boat cleaned up nicely. But that brings up a project. I have debated on doing new canvas in the same blue Mary Lee has had since new.

Or red. My phone has an app that allowed me to see what red would be like.

I think it may look better in sunbrella basil green. Plenty of time to consider it.

On the high side. We leave for Charleston harbor at the crack of dawn. I am finally feeling well enough to enjoy sailing and Mary Lee's long list of projects/repairs is nearing completion. I still need to splice a couple haul down lines and the reef lines. Will adjust tension in sails with halyard. The tack is fastened. I need sails up to study how everything needs to go. Everything on Mary Lee is supposed to be set up to work from the cockpit. When done right there is no reason to leave the cockpit. These lines were non-existant when I bought her and I have not found even one picture of how it is supposed to be set up. I could just do haul down lines, like a sloop has, but it will be a waste of rope if something needs done differently. I envision having these new lines spliced too short for the job.





So...Mary Lee will sail this weekend!! :-) I will have everything needed to splice lines as I figure them out. I am sensing a trip to Marathon this fall.

There have been many little jobs done on Mary Lee that never made the blog. Replacing screens in ports. Rewiring things. Broken rivets etc. Much scrubbing and general cleaning. But as I was laying on top of the engine putting the exhaust back on. I remembered the wiring mess I had initially found in the engine compartment. Years of exhaust soot build up that I scrubbed out, etc, etc, etc. While looking everything over and reminiscing, I felt a sense of pride in what I have accomplished.

I bought a boat that had been neglected for a long time before being put on the hard for 5 years. previous owner(s)would not pay to get things fixed right. Cobbled them together in a way that spelled disaster sooner or later. About the time it was put on the hard I was hurt and put out of commission. In four years I have mostly rebuilt Mary Lee and myself.

The help when I needed it and the friends I have made along the way are priceless to me. I won't lie, there were times when I almost admitted to biting off more than I could chew.


I would do it all over again. The good times do not out weigh the hard times yet....but they will as I move ahead. Certainly the fight to rebuild me will continue. But now I get to start enjoying some of the fruits of my labor.


I better get moving. Vivian has already got her gear ready for this weekend and I am sitting here blogging :-)
Fate certainly smiled on me when Vivian and I met. She is something else.