More boat yoga. Photo by Peter Nieslen

It’s been a long, cold March and early April up here in New England, so those of us who do our own commissioning work haven’t had much luck. I have been especially unlucky. One unseasonably mild day in March I rushed down to the yard and uncovered the boat, looking around smugly at my neighbors still covered in shrinkwrap like rows of giant larvae. Next weekend I returned to find the decks and cockpit coated with a layer of coal dust that had been belched out by the power plant next door. The boat looked as though it had just been pulled out of a fire.

Last week I planned to spend an hour or two changing the oil and fuel filters. I’d drained the old engine oil last October but had run out of time to do the filter. Then it snowed, and next thing you know it was March 20, 2009. Anyway – changing the oil filter in my 1973 Norlin 34 involves clambering into a cockpit locker, then insinuating myself upside-down into the coffinlike space between cockpit sole and hull bottom. Then I have to reach around the engine – which is mounted back-to-front – so I can get one hand onto the oil filter, which is tucked away behind the alternator so that I can barely see it. It’s one of those jobs where an extra joint in each arm would be a huge help. The boat was obviously built by people a lot younger and a lot skinnier than me, and working on it always leads to interesting contortions – boat yoga, we call it.
 
I hadn’t been find my strap wrench, so I’d gone to the auto parts store and blown six bucks on a very smart-looking oil filter wrench with articulating arms that would contract and grasp the filter in a death grip, enabling me to spin it off in seconds. Yeah. Sure. The arms contracted all right, but refused to grasp.  Back to the auto parts store, then back to the boat with another species of strap wrench. Finally, victory! The filter grudgingly comes loose, then slips out of my greasy hand, bounces off an engine mount and disgorges its contents into the bilge.

I check my watch – have I really been at this for three hours?! Next, I decide to change the oil in the saildrive leg, but what to catch the oil in? After casting around the boatyard for a container I decide to cut the top off a gallon milk jug and place it under the saildrive. This is a good move, as far more oil than I’d have thought the thing held spurts out in a muddy brown stream. When the arterial gush slows to a drip I replace the drain plug and pick up the milk jug – and it slips out of my hand. Unbelievingly, I watch the two quarts of oil spill onto the ground and over my shoes.

Half an hour later I have cleaned up as best I can, but I’m covered in a light film of oil and sweating like a horse in spite of the 45 degree temperature. It is nearly five o’clock, and it has taken me four hours to accomplish two easy jobs.

It could have been worse. At least sailboats only have one engine.