2018 - Pre-season Work on Juniper

Cathedral in Mulhouse

2018 is the year that Joan and I have the honor of getting Juniper out of hibernation and ready for the partners to cruise. I've gone over a week early to get the boat ready so Joan and will not lose and cruising time preparing the boat. Fortunately our Seattle partner, Tom, volunteered to come over and give me a hand, since there was some extra work due to Juniper being out of the water for a new steering system.

British Air got us to Basel the Sunday before Easter. Tom and I took a bus to Saint Louie and then a train to Mulhouse where we spent the night. Monday morning we were up early to see a bit of the old town before hopping a TGV to Dijon, then a local train to Saint Jean de Losne where Juniper wintered.

Our B&B host, Gérard, met us at the train station and drove us to his house then out to shop for mud boots for me, and finally to the boatyard. We dropped into the office to pick up our keys and were informed they had bad news for us. They had discovered that one of the two bolts that hold the top of the rudder post was missing - the reason this was bad news is that the rudder post is directly under the engine and we have to pull the engine to fix it. We gave the go ahead for our €1.000 bolt and went to work getting the bottom ready for launching on Friday. From there things have gone downhill a bit more.

Our €1.000 bolt - the first of many

As the mechanic was taking the engine apart to enable it to be pulled he discovered that the transfer plate that transfers energy from the engine to our hydraulic pump that turns the propeller had literally disintegrated into a bunch of metal chips (better now than when cruising but still another delay and expense)  and that 3 of the 8 bolts holding our engine mounts had eroded to the point that they had sheared off.

Engine on its way out.

Rather than just lifting the engine far enough to fix the original €1.000 bolt we now had to bring in a crane to lift the engine completely out, lifting it up and over the boat, then forklift it off to the shop for repairs. So now we're waiting to see how long till we can get all the sheared bolts removed, and order a new transfer plate and four engine mounts. Then another day to put it all back together. We have moved our launch day till the Tuesday after Easter Monday.

The silver lining to all this is that it was caught in a yard with experienced mechanics and all the tools, rather than causing a breakdown in the middle of nowhere while cruising.