Boat repair: St Petersburg

We get a slow start due to low water and a headwind again, but we meet Russell at 11a.m. in War Veterans Park.

He has an employee buy some heat shrink to bring to us. Unfortunately there is no electricity. We had assumed there would be something in the restrooms, but nada. No heat no shrink. 

But Russell is determined to help us with our long expedition. He sends his employee out for silicon (he doesn't want to tap into the silicon I am carrying).

We pull the skeg cable out and encounter a problem.  With most boats, Russell pulls the cable out from the skeg box. With our Wilderness Systems Tempest it turns out it needs to be pulled the other direction so it jams. We spend a while figuring and futzing and then head off to the local Wilderness Systems supplier. Nada. They have lots of stuff but not the parts we need.

New plan. We'll detach the cable from the skeg, and reuse the existing cable by feeding from the cockpit. Oops, we need an allen wrench. I actually had that item planned for my repair kit but dropped it when I decided not to carry a spare skeg cable.

We're off driving again, this time for an allen wrench. Did I mention that Russell actually has a business to run, an expedition to get ready for, and a wife home alone on her wedding anniversary? But the skeg is now not functional and he insists that he doesn't want to leave us worse than we started.

A plan is coming together, except the cable won't slide through the tube. We need some slipease. Russell made me promise not to say what kind of lubricant he or his employee had in their car, but it worked great and we soon had a functional skeg again.

The heat shrink idea spawned a new idea. I wrapped the tube gap with electrical tape. Well see how that works.

Russell is now hours overdue. He gives us contact info for another good shop (and Wilderness Systems dealer) further down the coast in Naples.

We all regret the timing. Any other day Russell would have put us up at his house so we can swap stories while we wait for parts.  He insists that we stop by on our way north.

We have another evening paddle, again with phenominal sunset and birds. We get to the island to camp just as the day trippers are leaving and inherit a campfire.

We think of an irony. We camp in a little island patch of wilderness and bird sancuary surrounded by city. But actually this little patch is a manmade island from dredging spoils and all of the natural land is covered with development.