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Layover at Lighthouse Point
Sunday, March 22, 1600, Inport, Lighthouse Point Boat Yard, Near Daytona Beach, Florida, Onboard Griffin.

The Bent Prop. Note the top blade of the starboard prop. Ouch!

We hauled the boat at 9:00am. As she came out of the water we saw the damage. One bent blade. The Marina owner chided us several times for not carrying a spare set of props as he fussed around removing the damaged screw. Not a major job for a good prop shop. Unfortunate that the nearest one is a two hour drive. With spare props onboard, we would have slapped on the spares and hit the waterway roaring. I'll have spares in the future!

One surprising thing was how clean the bottom is. Barnacles are only growing on the prop shaft and trim tabs. As their yard is full and they have a full schedule of haul-outs for Monday, the Boatyard owner wanted to put us back in the water for the night and haul us when we get back with the new props. Today being Sunday, he wanted to get us finished as quick as possible and get back to whatever he had planned for his day off. His wife called Budget Car Rental and arranged for them to come out here with a car for us to use on our dash to Jacksonville tomorrow.

The Starboard Diesel. It's a 6 cylinder in-line, turbocharged, aftercooled marine diesel. Puts out 165 h.p.

With the boat back in the water and not much else to do, we decided to relax and just play around for the day. Tom is off roller-blading and I used the time to write the next issue of the Champion Newsletter. Overall a very quiet day, and a great place to be stranded. We are still far enough south so the weather is fine. Low 70's this afternoon, with a fair amount of cooling breeze.

Let me use this opportunity to give you a brief tour of our vessel. Griffin was built in England. She is a Fairline 31 Corniche. A 31 foot Flybridge Sedan. We have a beam of 11' 7" which is fairly wide for our length, and a draft of 3'2". The layout is ideal for the two of us. In the bow is a single large stateroom with a queen-size island berth on the centerline. Aft of this stateroom we have a large head to port and an L shaped galley to starboard. The galley has a two burner stove with oven, microwave, Mr. Coffee, 2 bowl sink and cupboard space for food and dishes. It's tiny compared to home, but if you use every inch it's amazing what Tom can get cooked there.

Aft of the galley, you go up two steps to our main salon. The engines are under the deck here. To port we have an inside helm station. I love this feature and will never have a boat without one.

Tom is a great chef. Here he is preparing a little garlic to go with our Shrimp and Clam Pasta that he made for lunch. The second head of garlic didn't go into the sauce, but all the rest you see did!

When it is cold, raining, blowing, or just plain-old miserable outside, we are snug as a bug inside here. We drove 78 of the 83 hours of the southbound trip from here. Our first day north from Miami we were up top on the flybridge, but I suspect we will be inside for the rest of the trip.

On the starboard side, we have an L shaped sofa that drops down to make another queen sized bed. We have a table that fits in here, but which we can drag to the other side of the boat or even take out to the cockpit. It's a very flexible layout and while at times we would appreciate more space, it works for us.

At the aft end of the salon we have a double sliding glass door that leads out to a nicely sized cockpit. There is a U shaped cockpit seat that runs 9 feet across the transom and wraps forward a few feet on each side. You can see the photos of the cockpit and salon at www.GriffinUpdates.com

This is the main salon where we live most of the time. As it has been a little chilly after the first day, we have been driving from the lower helm station you can see on the port side. That is NOT a Daytona Beach spring breaker sitting on the sofa! This photo was taken from the Fairline brochure by using the macro photo setting on our digital camera. Honest!

Under the cockpit sole we have a large compartment for our Universal 5 Kilowatt generator, and the machinery for the two airconditioning units. We also have a holding tank for the head back here. Outboard of the engines we have fuel tanks that hold a total of 150 gallons. That is enough to go 150 miles with enough reserves to keep me comfortable.

There are only 4 or 5 Fairline Corniches imported into the United States, but she is quite popular in England with something like 500 of them over there. Fairline has restarted importing their boats into the US and have met with good success. The modern ones are works of art with interior cabinetry and wood finishes that put most fine furniture to shame. Mine may be a little older but she comes from the same stock. When we bought her, the surveyor, an old Chesapeake Bay waterman-type kept shaking his head and saying, "She's built like a friggin tank." When we hauled the boat this morning to pull the prop, the boatyard owner offered to look through his supply of used props for something that might get us going. When he measured the prop shaft diameter, he was surprised, "Inch and a half shafts on a little boat like that?" I personally like that "Overbuilt for the North Sea", British Approach to boat building that my father always wanted in his boats.

See! Another photo from the Fairline brochure. This is what Griffin looks like at speed.

That's it for today's update. Hard for us to get in trouble tied up to the pier. We will be leaving tomorrow at 5:00 am for the drive to Jacksonville to the prop shop. Depending on how fast they are, we should be back in the water by mid afternoon and northbound either tomorrow afternoon or first thing Tuesday. Stay tuned to see how fast we get out of here.

Warm regards,

The Griffin Crew, Jon & Tom

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