Just a couple more...

...projects ticked off the list. One of the things that came up on the pre-purchase survey was the lack of the lower life-lines on the stanchions below the teak rails. The holes were there, the lifelines not. We had replaced ours on Kintala  long ago with Samson Amsteel and loved it, so I looked online for some on sale since it can be quite expensive. After searching a bit, I found this truck winch line made of Amsteel with an eye already spliced into it at literally half the price of just the line itself from a marine supplier. Same. Exact. Stuff. Fifty feet for $22.99 as opposed to $51.50 with no spliced eye. Sold. Tim spent a couple hours cutting and splicing and adding hooks to open and close the lifelines at the gates. Another survey item crossed off the list and it cost less than a B.O.A.T. buck.

Another thing that we wanted to do was to install an Acu-Rite weather station to replace the badly corroded barometer and clock that were on the boat. We bought the Pro model, and while we're very pleased with the capabilities of the unit (time, date, pressure, rainfall, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, forecast, moon phase, and historical figures), it will remain to be seen whether it can survive the rigors of the marine world. It's really intended to be installed permanently on land, not on a boat, but I've heard from several people that it has worked for them on their boats so we thought we'd give it a try. Time will tell and we'll include a review about it on the Reviews tab up above after we've had it for awhile. It is one of the weird adjustments you have to make when you go from sail to power - that insatiable need to know what direction and speed the winds are - and the lack of a masthead anemometer is a little disconcerting. We had originally hoped to mount this thing on the radar arch, but it expressly warned in the installation instructions against mounting too near things like radar, so we opted for the side of the hardtop. This does not put it in optimum position for accurate wind readings, but at least it will give us some idea.

I had a daunting list for this work trip over a full notebook page long. It was good to get at least 3/4 of it checked off, much more than I had hoped. The few remaining items will get pushed to the next trip, but for now we're feeling pretty dang good about the progress.

The size of a corner

The port side of the salon as viewed
from the cockpit outside

Long ago in a class room far, far away, a math teacher once claimed that a true corner has no size. Most of the things called “corners” are actually arcs or bends, gentle or sharp, but still a change in direction whose length is easily measured. A corner is an abrupt change, a break in a straight line or, (as he described it) an intersection of two lines. Lines he defined as being an infinite collection of infinitesimally small points without width, height, or length. One such a point defines any true corner. Thus a corner is a thing without a size. Not being any kind of mathematician I will not vouch for his claim.

The first thing we noticed the first time boarded First Light was a salon stuffed with furniture. The starboard side was filled to overflowing with an enormous couch, one so large that entering through the aft sliding door meant walking around the edge of the thing. The port side wasn't quite as stuffed, but an imposing chair along with the folding ship's table left little room to spare. A narrow path separated the two areas. And the color? Not sure what one would call it, but it and my eyes did not make friends. I am sure the previous owner was quite content with the set-up and to each her (or his) own. Still, the first thing we did after handing over enough cash to make the boat ours was hire a couple of fit young men to lift couch and chair off the boat, toss them in a truck, and take them far, far away. 

Two deck chairs took up residence on the port side, along with a stack of parts bins in one corner and the folding boat table sitting against the forward bulkhead. It was the only space on the boat for Deb and I to sit, eat, and practice music. The starboard side became home for the imposing collection of tools, parts, and materials needed to get an on-the-hard-for-two-years trawler ready for service. The pile went from steering station to aft bulkhead, was piled nearly as high as the windows, and nudged right up against the floor panels that lift to access the engine room. Not an ideal working or living arrangement. It is impossible to cozy up to the one you love when each is sitting in a deck chair feeling the wear and tear of a long work day. And there have been many a moment when it felt like I was spending more time rooting through a junk pile for some particular tool than was spent using that tool after finally locating it. I love working on a project sitting in the middle of a well organized shop. The boat was a seriously disorganized shop sitting in the middle of a project. Living happened along the edges...about the worst conditions imaginable for either shop or living space.

From day one Deb has been on the lookout for new furniture, and many an hour has passed as we looked online for something that appeared “right”. Nothing was found that fit the bill. This trip, while in a store looking for something else, a one-off outdoor couch set-up sitting on display caught her attention. The next day we drove over to take another look. Being an out-door thing it was made of wicker and, compared to the old couch, was light as a feather. In addition it was built with a massive amount of storage under each leg of the “L” to store the cushions out of the weather. Even better, the lids ride on gas cylinders. No need to hold them up with your head while rummaging around looking for something. Moreover it was a color that would look good on the boat, was a comfortable sit, and long enough for a nap. After a bit of debate the decision was made to fork over the listed $$$, rent a pick-up for a couple of hours, and take the thing back to the boat yard.

 

Lifting it onboard was a breeze, as was dropping it in place. One leg of the “L” fit the length of the port bulkhead to, literally, within an inch. The other leg of the “L” spanned the aft salon bulkhead just short of where the sliding door opens; thus making it a perfect place to sit and shed boots or shoes before traipsing deeper into the living space. The folding boat table sits perfectly in the crux of the “L”. 

Virtually all of the tools, parts, and supplies disappeared into just one of the storage sections. The other easily held the six sections of the back porch sun screen plus the exterior covers for both the front windscreen and the back door...with room to spare. I am not sure we could have sat down and custom designed something that fit this close or worked this well. And Deb stumbled upon the only one like it in the world while looking for something else. What are the odds?

Even with the deck chairs still serving as additional seating on the starboard side, the work space / disaster area has been utterly transformed into a near magical space. And thus it is that we turned a huge corner. (Sorry Teach!) No longer a shop, or a project; not just another boat...but a home. 

 

Vacation?

Flybridge ladders make great tool
benches it seems...

Back for another stretch of working on First Light. Even with good progress being made launch date is still just a fuzzy event lurking somewhere in an uncertain future. But time spent on the boat is more than just time spent working on the boat. Each time we climb aboard I am a bit amazed that this thing actually belongs to us. Even sitting on the hard I have come to love the living space. From the forward main cabin to the stern cockpit everything feels like just the right size in just the right place. It is fun to imagine being anchored in No Name Harbor, watching the party from the fly bridge while sipping sundowners.

Until that day, working on the boat really is what being at the boat is all about. We are chewing up vacation days to get it done, but it makes for a strange kind of “vacation.” About 10 minutes after the tools start to appear all thoughts get focused on the task at hand. Just figuring out an initial approach to some modification, worn out “this,” broken “that,” or uncovering some bit of carnage due to rot, is the first hurdle. In the aviation world, whole manuals are written on the proper way to do just about any repair or maintenance task required. It is a level of precision that most people walking down the jet way have no idea exists. But boats? By comparison the marine world is the wild-wild-west of repair, maintenance, and servicing. Walk around any do-it-yourself boat yard (and some open only to “pros”) and see. Pretty much anything goes, and everything has.

I assume it is different in the super yacht world, but I don't know anyone who sails in those rarified waters. In our case, there is no maintenance manual specific to First Light. No parts manual. Even if there were, decades of after market parts, modifications, and repairs make her a unique collection of bits, with quarks and weirdness hiding in places no one would have guessed. Accessory units like engines and generators have some good documentation, but it ends where the accessory and boat come together. For example, there are maintenance and parts manuals for the 4BT3.9 engines in First Light. But they say nothing about how those engines are mounted and melded into the boat to make for a working whole. The same can be said for just about every pump, valve, relay, wire, and switch in every system. Helicopters are often described as an odd collection of parts flying in close formation but determined to head off in their own direction at the first opportunity. In like manner, boats are an odd collection of parts engaged in synchronized swimming, with any part being heavier than water determined to sink at the first opportunity.  

Sometimes facing a new job it is a bit scary, with no real idea of how to get done what needs to be done. But then comes the figuring, planning, cutting, fitting, backing-up and trying again (accompanied by the appropriate language) and making it work. The hours disappear, tools get misplaced and rediscovered, a little blood normally gets shed (again accompanied by the appropriate language). The path toward the finish will take strange and unanticipated twists. Time is lost while sourcing materials. What looked like a good idea at first didn't take into account some bit of impossible access or a weird, boat determined, shape. Eventually it all seems to come together and when the sun sets it feels like it was a good and proper way to spend one of the days allotted to this life. And with each repair, each modification, First Light becomes a bit more “our” boat. Something ever more rare in our made-by-a-machine, they-all-look-the-same, buy-it-in-a-box, then throw it away, world.

But that same sunset also brings sore arms, an aching back, bruised hands, and legs that feel like lead after countless trips up and down ladders and in and out of hatches. There is also the feeling of never having enough days to spend. So each day gets pushed to its limit and necessary compromises are made. Time is always running away, with funds often dwindling away as well. Much as we hate to admit it, there is no promise of it all working out in the end. But that is the way of all of life so we carry on.

Working on the boat comes with the live-aboard life (for most of us anyway). But we don't live aboard so we can work on the boat. I remember a lesson learned decades ago from my life-long, professional truck mechanic Grandfather: "Getting it perfect is always the enemy of getting it done." From him I learned to be a hard core pragmatist with just a hint of OCD. First you have make it work. Then you make it as safe as possible. Then, if time and money permits, you can make it as pretty as you like. It isn't easy, and there are few hard and fast rules. Just remember that the goal is to be on the water as safely and comfortably as possible.

It is a strange mix of skill, means, patience, personality, and creativity. I am happy to be back at it again. Even if it does make for a strange kind of “vacation.”

Espacios Útiles

Six months ago I started working on Duolingo to get my Spanish back, motivated by my grandchildren who are doing the lessons as part of their homeschool curriculum. A good part of my childhood was spent in Viña del Mar, a small coastal town in Chile, but as the years back home in the US progressed, the fluency was lost. I was also interested in the challenge as a way to keep this aging brain engaged. So, since boat projects are getting intermixed with my daily Duolingo lessons, the title of this post is Espaciós Útiles, or Useful Spaces.

One of the things you find yourself tackling when you purchase a new-to-you boat is making the space yours. Different people live in different ways, and their space reflects that, but those ways may not fit the next owner down the line. For the most part, First Light has been taken care of and arranged by previous owners who paid a great bit of attention to detail and quality. For this I am eternally grateful, especially after the experience that was the purchase of Kintala. But we live a bit differently, so some of the spaces require modification.

One of the examples of this are the storage areas. You might have read the post from a couple trips ago where we modified two hanging lockers on the boat into a shelf-filled closet (because we absolutely never hang any clothes on the boat) and a pantry (because there was zero food storage space in the galley.) Now I needed a safe and sturdy place to store my Sailrite machine and sewing supplies. The Sailrite is many things, but light is not one of them. As a result, it must be secured so that it won't tumble into anything when underway. First Light has a very large storage cabinet under the lower helm seat, perfectly sized for this purpose, but it required a shelf addition to accomodate the supplies. A few strategically placed shelf supports and a plywood shelf did the trick nicely.

 

I still have plans to repaint the interior of the cabinet at some point, but for now the project got crossed off the list.

The next space was one in the spare pullman berth on the port side. At one point, someone had installed a washing machine in a cabinet space there but the washer had long since been removed. Someone else had installed some sliding basket drawer things, but I found them highly unusable because it wasted so much of the storage space. It also bothered me that there was no door for the cabinet. So I built a couple shelves and (after three iterations) custom built some doors for the cabinet. This process was a real challenge because I wanted the doors to open toward the berth rather than towards the door so that you could access the cabinet from the hallway. Because of the handle on the storage compartment under the berth and the frame for the mattress, the doors couldn't open completely with my first two designs. After a bit of moving this and cutting that, I ended up with something I'm happy with. I still have to put the stain and finish coat on them to match the rest of the woodwork, but that will have to wait for warmer, drier weather. I also am in the process of changing the way the cabinet door opens under the berth. It currently is installed with self-stick velcro, and the self-stick part of that equation isn't cooperating. I've installed a proper hinge but still need a new handle that will clear the bifold doors for my new cabinet. All of that will have to be handled on the next trip as we're about out of time on this one. 

The first iteration shelf installation

The original hanging baskets

 

 

 

The doors without the upper trim

 

The doors with the trim installed

I still have to come up with a latch solution for these doors. I think I will use a magnetic catch on the left side, but only another trip to Lowe's will decide that. For now I'm pretty happy with the progress, and we have a couple of cabinets with much more useful space.