The bad news is that we are stuck in Salinas for a few weeks to get Orion ready for full time cruising. It could be worse though, because Salinas is a pretty nice place to be stuck :) Our plans have changed accordingly...we will most probably not sail to Grenada for the hurricane season...it's already June, which marks the beginning of h-season and we don't want to race south! We will stick around Puerto Rico...sail to Vieques, Culebra, and maybe St. Thomas...if and when a storm will threaten we will come back to Salinas to hide in the mangroves...we have done this for the past two h-seasons, so we kind of know the drill...The main thing for us is to be "out there", away from the dock, pursuing our happiness...and happiness we have on the water whether that is in Grenada or in Culebra does not matter too much!
Now to the ugly news...we have to replace the chainplates on Orion...two of them had hairline cracks, so we decided to replace all seven of them...three on each side and one on the back! WTF... What on earth does that mean?...I can hear our non-sailing friends exclaim with a deep inward bound breath! What it means is major repair stuff, but it has to be done and here is why: The chainplates on a sail boat are stainless steel plates situated on the hull...on some boats they are imbedded in the fiberglas and on others they are mounted on the outside of the hull. Orion, like most Morgans, has the chainplates on the outside of the hull...thank God, because it is a lot easier to replace them that way. So there is always some good news in the ugly news, yeah to that :) Of course to reach the bolts from the inside is not quite so easy...Orion has been lovingly outfitted with teak panel strips and handcrafted interior cabinetry by her previous owners for which we are eternally grateful! However in order to reach the bolts that hold the chainplates from the inside we had to dismantle all the cabinetry and then unscrew most of the teak panel strips...a time consuming task, but alas a rewarding one...the cabinetry was fitted with big screw type anchors, which could be detached with an Allen Key! Joy over joy, because now we know that we can fit them back in again easily...uff...and here we thought we might have to use a hammer or similar vulgar instrument and start pounding (!). Well I say easily but I know my captain is rolling his eyes towards the ceiling...you have to be kind of a contortionist to reach some of those screwy thingies. Suffice it to say that I am very proud of my captain, who stretched his arms and his body in all kinds of distorted poses...and he got it done in the end...hurray. (Hah...Sometimes it pays off to have short arms like mine that cannot possibly reach the target.)
