Finished Products

  Here is a good picture of the "new" engine room, complete with two Yanmar 54 horsepower diesel engines.

We spent the weekend waiting for coats of bottom paint to dry.  Yes, we painted the bottom of "The Second Noelle" blue now as Ray says it is much better visibility when scrubbing the bottom under water.  We also painted the bottom of the dinghy, leaving just enough of the original bottom so boats behind us can see our name better.

Well, none of the pictures turned out.  The port engine looks just like the starboard, it's just on the other side.  We were waiting for parts to get it hooked up.  They were overnighted on Tuesday to arrive here on Wednesday.  They weren't here by shop closing time, but Linda just happened to be outside when the UPS truck pulled up, so she went running.  The driver was very nice & said that he called the shop manager & told him he had a package but the shop manager told him not to bother after 4:00 p.m. because no one would be there.  However, the driver said he felt like if someone had it overnighted they must need it, so he came anyway thankfully.  So with that, Ray had the port engine running in no time.  The only remaining glitch was that the generator was running but not powering up the boat.  Earlier in the day Ray called an electrician friend to get his advise.  We assumed the wires must not have been hooked up correctly.  With this bigger generator, there is not much clearance from the top of it to the floor, and guess where those wires are.  So Ray cut another hole in the floor of the salon to access them, but everything looked right according to the electrician also.  In Linda reading the manual (because guys don't do that), we learned that the display panel on the generator showed several bits of information if you scrolled through it, including how many volts the generator was putting out.  So Ray fired it up again and scrolled to find that the generator was putting out the 120 volts it was supposed to be.  We tried the electrical panel with no luck.  Then Ray decided to flip the breaker on the generator, and vualah, everything was working.  Now before you jump to the "duh!" conclusion, let it be said that on the breaker he had it switched to green assuming that would be on.  Well, I guess in Japan red means on.  So the moral of the story...there was no need to cut a hole in the floor!

Here is the new starboard engine all hooked up with our own customized high rise mixing elbow made by Bob of course.  Oh, with the help of Shannon, both relatives of "The Bar-B".  Today we were able to start it.  We thought while we were gone for two weeks all of the parts we ordered would be in and we would be able to get the engine job complete and the boat back in the water by the end of the week.  However, we still do not have the wiring harness extensions or the extra gaskets we need for our special high rise mixing elbow exhaust.  We also started the generator today, which ran fine, but it did not power up everything in the boat.  Ray just told Linda to remove everything from the old generator.  He didn't tell her to pay attention, so when he asked which color wire came from which bolt, she had no idea and he wasn't sure how to hook up the wires to the new generator.  We are assuming his guess was not right.

Extra!

  

Here you can see the pretty brass rudder extensions our fabricator friend, Bob made for us.  Linda took the original rudders down to the local machine shop and had them cut about three inches off the bottom of them.  Ray attached the extensions.  Linda tightened the bolts, and attached the new zincs to them.  She also attached the big plate zinc on the back and the two shaft zincs.
 

We also got brand new props!  The starboard one attached pretty easy, but the shop manager had to get a dye tool for Ray to fix the threads on the port side shaft where the employee took the old prop off and messed up the threads where he beat it with a hammer!

And the special addition we are so excited about...CUTTERS!  See that blade behind the prop?  That is one of the blades on the cutters that will cut nets or lines that get in the prop!  No more dodging crab traps and fish traps!  Can't wait to blast right through them at about seven miles an hour!

Read all about it!

We returned to the boat today after being gone for over two weeks.  We spent a few days in Murphy so Ray could work on the house he got to build.  Then we went to Buffalo to see Ray's family and celebrate his sister's 60th birthday.  After that it was back to Murphy for a few more days to get some more done on that house.  Can't wait to get all of our parts we ordered and get this project complete enough to get the boat back in the water and back up to Chattanooga.  We will finish the rest of the projects up there.  It looks like one of those projects might be getting the bottom of the boat painted up there since they still have not sanded it to our satisfaction here.

While Ray was inside the air conditioned cabin hooking up everything for the generator and engines, Linda spent two days waxing the boat below the rub rail.  You can see here it is shinier!  You can also see that we are directly behind the two story shop building.  That saved us from the wind storm that blew through the boatyard from the south, but it also blocked our view of the fireworks.