Since her launch fifteen or so years ago, we’ve had Ganymede on a pretty irregular haulout schedule. Her first haulout happened in Cartagena, Colombia, just a year after we first sailed from California. There had only been two coats of bottom paint over the bare gelcoat, and I’d nearly scrubbed all that off trying to keep the bottom clean in the warm tropical waters of the Pacific and southern Caribbean.
A couple coats of SeaHawk paint in Cartagena lasted her just over two years, sailing in colder waters as we went north. After that, it was random: some years we’d haul out, others we’d keep her in the water. With local boatyards changing hands, prices going up, and boat haulers retiring, the only constant has been that every year it costs more—it’s just a matter of what’s affordable this time.
One glorious time, we hauled to our house, then launched again for less than in-water storage would have cost. That was the occasion of a big re-fit and topside paint. Trying that again two winters later, the cost of trucking had surpassed in-water again—but we needed a haulout.
It’s worth a little extra, though, to have the boat at the house rather than blocked in a yard or in a slip—I can redeem a half-hour here and there to chip away at projects. Strange, that after all this time, I’ve still got projects to do. Some are routine maintenance: hull waxing happened, bottom paint sanding, of course, but there’s still modifications going on.
Principal of these was the lengthening of the new outboard bracket. While the experimental outboard sled worked perfectly after some beefing up last winter, it still was a little too short, and the propeller didn’t sit as deep in the water as it ought. Though my welding guys groan when they see me coming for another hare-brained modification, they always manage to do me proud, and the outboard will now sit way better in the water and hopefully not cavitate so much.
Another modification was of a temporary nature: to switch out the gymbaled propane stove for a diesel heater/cookstove. That’s part of a greater, long-term scheme to get back to Arctic waters, where a fuel-efficient heater that can stay on 24/7 is key to interior comfort. Space constraints dictated that it be a cookstove as well as heater, since the only place to put it was where the propane stove lives. By some remarkable stroke of luck, I found a Dickinson Newport unit at secondhand, complete with miles of stovepipe and three different fuel metering valves.
Before hacking up Ganymede’s galley, I thought it wise to test the stove in the shop. They have a reputation for being very fiddly and finicky—a reputation that’s well-earned—but after spreading layers of soot on every surface and myself several times over, I had it mostly sorted. It’s an elegant, primitive, and simple burner that needs to be coaxed gently into life, but once burning hot it just keeps on trucking.
Satisfied with the dry run, I built a frame to hold it (no gymbals because of the stovepipe), and cut a hole in the cabin for the exhaust. It took some wiggling and shifting to get everything to line up just right, but before long I had hung a temporary header tank from the deckhead, filled it with diesel, and tried to get it lit. The stove comes equipped with a 12-volt fan to assist in starting a draft, but since Ganymede has no electric source, it had to be made to work without. It’s astonishing how little diesel fuel it takes to make a colossal amount of sooty smoke, and I used not a little fuel trying to start a draft in a cold stovepipe. It was in a state of near-despair of ever getting the stove lit that I thought of warming up the stovepipe with a propane torch. Two minutes of shooting flame into the barymetric damper and the stove started right up. It ran for five days, keeping the boat a comfy 65 degrees, while the temps outside hovered around 20. Finally I let it run out of fuel and go out, but the experiment was a great success.
Before launching, I took it back out and replaced the propane stove—the diesel stove wouldn’t be appropriate for summer cruising in New England, where a summer of awesome cruising is just over the horizon, and will be here before you know it.