Boat projects were definitely abundant, now that we had the bottom job done on the boat and she was home, tucked safely away in a cozy slip at Palafox Pier:
We found a great slip at the very end, protected by a sea wall on one side with a floating finger dock on the other, and it’s just a short jump out into the Bay:
While tossing the lines and jumping out in the bay is definitely always a better alternative, we had a growing list of things we needed to do to the boat to ready her for some real cruising this winter. We started it the day of the Survey/Sea Trial many moons ago and it always seemed to be growing.
Full list HERE.
I could go into laborious detail (trust me, the projects were plentiful – I told you, owning a boat is a lot of work!) but let’s get a condensed version, shall we? Over the course of the summer, amidst anchorages, sunset sails and other fun outings, Phillip and I did the following to the boat:
Changed out the batteries:
If you recall, the batteries (which were already about 3-4 years old) ran completely down when the boat was unplugged in Carabelle. As our buddy Kevin had warned us and he ended up being right (hate when that happens!), the complete run-down did have a devastating effect on the batteries. They were never able to fully recover and truly hold a charge after that, so we had to slap four new ones in. Not cheap! But, thankfully, in exchange for exactly 3.5 beers, Bottom-Job Brandon helped us get them in and wired up.
We also cleaned up the wiring in the electronics panel and put in a new bus bar to reduce the number of connections on each terminal:
We fixed the leak at the base of the mast by injecting silicone in/around the bolt heads and re-taping the boot cover:
I got a little crafty again with some inexpensive fabrics from a place that rhymes with Schmal-Mart and made a cover for the power cord and fenders:
Now you see that hideous yellow cord …
Now you don’t … Cord-WOW!
That thing was a beast to wrestle though. I tangled with that 50-foot anaconda for three days:
The fender covers were much easier:
(And, yes, this was all crafted with my trusty hot glue gun and stapler. I love my Swingline!)
“Haa … have you seen my stapler?”
To up the “bling” factor, we polished all of the metal through-out:
And, last but not least, we replaced some gaskets in the coolant system on the engine:
Yes, some days on the boat look like this. It’s not all rainbows and sunshine. And, it’s not spacious either. To get this job done, I had to cram down into the engine room on the boat. A nice series of me crawling out of this dirty, grimy hole (through a tiny opening in the aft-berth) will help you truly appreciate the tightness of these quarters:
Where’s Annie?
There she is! Now c’mon out Annie!
Uggh …. Grunt …
I now know why they call it aft-berth! That’s about what it felt like – trust me.
But, thankfully, every time we spent a hot sweaty afternoon doing chores on the boat, we always ended it with a dip in the pool by our slip.
We can even see the top of our mast from the pool:
That way, we can sip pinot gris pool-side comfortably knowing she’s at least still up-right and floating. And, speaking of, I have to mention our Cup-WOW wine glasses that also sit up-right and float in the pool.
I mean, could there be a better invention? Wooowwww!!
And, the best part is, letting the glass float around in the pool helps warm up too-chilly white wines because the water is pretty warm. Not for that reason. I never do that in pools! I’m always afraid they’re going to have that secret blue dye that will show up and I’ll be feverishly swishing a cloud of blue water toward the old guy next to me with the rubber duckie floatie pointing at him with a face of total disgust. I never pee in pools! (At least not without conducting a little squirt dye test first!).
So, with our boat chores done (for the moment at least), our mast upright and our wine perfectly warmed, we enjoyed many-a-lazy afternoon by the pool, which usually progresses in this manner:
Read …
Relax …
ZZZZZZZ …….
Working on boats is hard!