Thrash and thrash again

The big news of the weekend is no news from Cape Cod. Baby Michael, grand baby #4, is due any minute but he is keeping Mom, Dad and the rest of us cooling our heels for now. Rest assured, even when thrashing on the boat, cell phones are kept close at hand.

And thrash we did. Deb power-washed the bottom of the hull and then disassembled the head faucet. (That thing is outrageously expensive for something made out of plastic parts. One would think it had "Cessna" stamped on it somewhere!) I worked on the cabin top, sea-hood, companionway hatch and sliders. When Deb got done doing what she was doing the boat looked a lot better. When I got done doing what I was doing the boat looked exactly the same as it had when I started. Ah well, at least the hatch works better now.

We came home last night. Some of our projects are waiting on parts while others are waiting on weather. Headliner glue and bottom paint need warm and dry, which were in short supply this weekend. (The cold and wind made Deb's task with the power-washer the toughest duty of the weekend.) But this morning some other stuff we had on order showed up. I spent an enjoyable afternoon with a Docto,cutting wheel and drill motor making dust and shinny new interior side panels for the V-berth and cabin.

(Never underestimate the joy to be found in a compressor and a drawer full of air tools! Sometimes I think I should have stayed in the shop and out of the cockpit. I have to admit though, generally they pay pilots better than they pay mechanics, and mechanics work a lot harder. I wonder, can you fit an air compressor on a 38' live-aboard?)

Friday afternoon I had a chance to go sailing for an hour or so with Schmitty, Anna, and Berry on Schmitty's "Alcestis." While it was so good to be back on the water, I was dressed for doing manual labor while shielded from the north east wind. By the time we picked up the dock lines my teeth were chattering hard enough to test the new crown I got put in last week! Still, one should never pass up a chance to go sailing.

I have to admit it is a bit odd to be working so hard on Nomad driven mainly by the idea of selling her. Not right away of course. It will (probably) be a year at least. And when we do sell her it will be to move off the land and onto a bigger, more capable boat, to start our full-time sailing adventure. (Keeping in mind, that is our plan. One should not make too many assumptions about what life will bring.) All this thrashing has brought up a bit of a new concern for me as well.

I knew nothing at all about sailboats when we bought Nomad, but I would not have guessed at the kinds of things we have found to repair / upgrade / replace; and she is a 1986, factory boat that has spent her whole life in fresh water. Given the amount of work needed just to keep her (or get her) in the shape I find acceptable, just how much work would be involved in an early 1980's salt water boat? (The kind that looks like will best fit our budget.) If we buy such a boat as our home will we spend a year in the yard, spending money like mad, trying to make it into something we feel secure living on? Should we move "age" up near the top of the list of things to consider? Quality of maintenance, not year of manufacture, is what is important when it comes to airplanes. I am sure the same is true of boats. But I can look at an airplane and its maintenance logs and get a good feel for what shape the machine is in. (A skill that didn't keep me from taking a job flying a Poppa-Oscar-Sierra Citation V! A plane, by the way, that spent much of its life near salt water...which didn't help its Poppa-Oscar-Sierra status at all.) Given the harsh environment endured by a salt-water boat, and the complete lack of formalized maintenance records, I'm starting to see age as a potentially serious problem.

I'm simply going to ignore things like Mickey-Mouse wiring, plastic faucets that cost a fortune, self-tapping screws chewing the snot out of parts everywhere I look, and cheap hose clamps keeping water out of the boat. I'm not sure how such things got into boats in the first place, but they can all be replaced as necessary. Things like companionway hatches that simply drag across the the cabin top, fiberglass to fiberglass, do kind of baffle me. I expect that kind of "engineering" on a child's toy, but can you imagine a car where the door ground the paint off the roof every time it was opened? K.I.S.S. has its good points, but sometimes I think boat manufacturers take it a bit too far.

Anyway, more thrashing to come with bottom paint and interior install now near the top of the list.