Another day
Another victory for the bold (repair) crew! We got the second capstan working. As it turns out, if you have to fix mechanical problems all the time, you get into the habit of hoarding pieces of machinery. And if you live in a harbor town on an island, much of that hoarded machinery is marine-oriented. So our friend Bradley happened to have a few parts that we were able to use in our efforts. So both capstans are now making that „tac tac tac tac” every sailor loves so much.
But we do have a pretty bell.
We therefore now have a running engine (although it does produce a lot of smoke at the moment; we will look into that later on), sails and coating on their way, and a working way to manipulate said sails. Propulsion is getting sorted out. We even dismantled the turbo, and we are quite confident that we are able to make it work. We also managed to expose a leak in the rudder acumulator tank and fix it with a new seal, as well as clean the bilge water pump; now it works as intended.
For some reason
We are now on the brink of having propulsion ready, and we are actually able to point the bow in the direction we want it to go.
However, we have no idea what the direction will be. For some reason, the compass is missing. But we do have a pretty bell. Unfortunately, if we try taking her to the high seas, we’re pretty sure we will be the ones for whom the bell will toll (see what I did there? Suck it, Hemingway, first draft!). There are quite a few other important bits missing. Like a raft. Or EPIRB. Or any rescue measures, for that matter. But we have a jolly-boat! What a beautiful little shell she is. We’re going to call her Venaturka.
