{"id":35,"date":"2014-07-20T22:48:31","date_gmt":"2014-07-20T22:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/?p=35"},"modified":"2014-07-25T19:49:46","modified_gmt":"2014-07-25T19:49:46","slug":"chain-of-fools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/?p=35","title":{"rendered":"Chain of Fools"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"COF_1\"<\/a>The moral of this tale is never ever assume anything. Ever. (I thought we\u2019d already learnt this lesson, but obviously not well enough).<\/p>\n

So Friday was a red letter day for Toucan \u2013 the West Marine van arrived with our new oven, 33kg Rocna anchor and 100 m of 3\/8\u201d high test G40 chain (the importance of the technical aspects will be revealed shortly). We\u2019d already spent the morning cleaning out the anchor locker of all the old lengths of mouldy rope and removing the huge 50 kg \u2018claw\u2019 anchor. (We tossed up whether to keep it, but in the end decided it was way too big and unwieldy for the boat.\u00a0 Besides, we know and trust the Rocna will hold in just about anything). We also checked that the anchor windlass was working. So far, so good.<\/p>\n

Next challenge was to get the anchor and chain on the boat. There was no space to bring the boat into the dock, so the dinghy would have to do the job. But wait -let\u2019s be smart about this and mark the chain in 10 metre lengths before we load it into the dinghy. (We use a series of different coloured cable ties to do this so we know how much chain we\u2019re putting out). Once that was done we fed the chain into the dinghy, hoping it would stay afloat with the 500kg load of chain, anchor and Bruce! It did!! So far, so good.<\/p>\n

Once Bruce was positioned under the bow roller, I started up the windlass and started feeding the chain into the locker. After the first 10 metres of chain, the windlass cut out.\u00a0 After that it was an agonizing process of stop\/start with the windlass, feeding in 2 metres at a time.\u00a0 Not sure what\u2019s causing the problem but we have to get the chain on the boat. Finally (Finally!!) we\u2019re down to the last 5 metres and Bruce attaches the anchor and puts it in the water.\u00a0 But with added load the chain won\u2019t hold on the windlass gypsy and keeps jumping, so the anchor is getting lower rather than higher. Bruce then gives himself a hernia trying to lift the anchor back into the dinghy so he can manhandle it up onto the bow roller.\u00a0 Finally after much swearing he\u2019s successful and we now have anchor and chain on board. So far, so good (except for Bruce\u2019s hernia).<\/p>\n

We start to examine the problem with the windlass, both of us crouched down in the anchor locker.\u00a0 It\u2019s then that we look closely at the anchor chain links, each of which should be embossed with a tiny \u201cG4\u201d stamp.\u00a0 There\u2019s the stamp, but it says \u201cG3\u201d not \u201cG4\u201d. We stare at each other in disbelief. They\u2019ve sent us the wrong grade chain. NOOOOO!! We didn\u2019t check it on the dock, we made the fatal mistake of assuming it was the chain we ordered.\u00a0 So now we have to get 100 metres of chain off the boat, back in the dinghy, unload it, re-load it with the correct chain and start the whole process again. Doh!!<\/p>\n

Thinking that at least we might get some comfort from being able to install our new wall oven, we unpack it and then stare at it with the same puzzled expression that we stared at the chain with.\u00a0 The packaging is very dodgy, there\u2019s no instruction manuals with it and the metal trim kit is bent all along the bottom edge. Surely this can\u2019t be right?? A few phone calls later confirms our fears \u2013 it appears our oven has literally fallen off the back of a truck. So back it goes with the chain. Some days it just doesn\u2019t pay to get out of bed!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The moral of this tale is never ever assume anything. Ever. (I thought we\u2019d already learnt this lesson, but obviously not well enough).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-svtoucan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6B46t-z","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions\/172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}