Hurry Up and Wait

As mentioned in Tim's previous post, we somehow neglected to decide to work on the outboard first when we arrived two weeks ago, which would have allowed the shop it inevitably found its way to sufficient time to fix it before we were ready to leave. As a result, we finished the "have to do before we leave" list two days ago and now we're waiting on the outboard repair.

Since neither Tim nor I seem to be able to Just Sit and Do Nothing, we're moving on to some of the less pressing issues on the boat. One of the things nagging at me was the fact that we have a lot of heavy stuff stored under the pullman berth, at the forward end of which is one of the air conditioning units with the ever-so-delicate cooling fins just waiting to be smashed with a parts box tossed by a too-enthusiastic ICW traveler's wake. I'd given some thought to how I might section it off without restricting the inbound airflow, so a trip to the local hardware store was in order.

The local hardware store, Village Hardware & Marine Supply, is a small-town hardware store with some amazing treasures tucked into dusty corners for the shopper willing to peruse the aisles for a time. I was hoping for some of that perforated tin that comes in sheets that I could mount in front of the unit in some sort of frame. After some long discussion with the guys who work there (they know me by name now), one of the guys who is nick-named MacGyver went out back to see what he might find in their storage area. He came back a few minutes later with an old display shelf that was destined for the dumpster. It was absolutely perfect. If you had custom designed the thing you could not have done a better job. A few screws, washers, and L-brackets later and I had the perfect partition to protect the unit.

Tim has been busying himself with teak work. The teak rail on the sides of the boat had been finished with Captain's Varnish and I can't possibly describe how much we hate that stuff. Our intention is to do the teak in Awlwood finish because we loved it on Kintala but that will be a St. Louis project as it's more involved to do it well than we have time for now. The peeling Captain's Varnish was sharp on your hands as you used the rail so, for the time being, we just wanted to sand it off and get some teak oil on it till we get back to St. Louis. Took him two days, but it looks great and it's soooo much nicer on the hands.

I've been doing some organizing and rearranging of cabinets and such to make things accessible where they should be. One of the things I did was to move some racks that were in the wrong place for us to where they were more useful. After the fiasco that was the horrendous storm last week, we discovered we needed a place to keep our coffee cups and water bottles when not in use. These served well.

I spent a full day cleaning the flybridge this weekend with a Magic Eraser and some Better Life All Purpose Cleaner. I figure if I keep telling you how amazing this stuff is then you'll break down and buy some. (And, no, I don't have any relationship with the company other than buying a truly quality product that works even better than they claim.) I only brought a quart of the concentrate and I should have brought the whole gallon. We.Use.It.On.Everything. Then yesterday while I was at the store, Tim tackled some of the green moldy stuff that had built up on the sides of the flybridge and the cockpit. I really think he just wanted to play with his new toy - a deck wash down! He loves the thing and it makes it so much easier to do some of the deck cleaning, something we needed badly after hauling the anchor chain out of the chain locker to check the length markings and the general condition of the chain. 

I also spent some time organizing the cave that is the upper helm storage area. You seriously could sleep four of our grandkids in there and, as a result, it tends to accumulate stuff. I bought some of these bags and they worked so well I got another set. One for our air conditioner cord, one for our super long extension cord, one for our hose, one for extra lines...I may eventually order even one more set because they work so well.

Things are winding down to Departure Day now as can be seen by the fact that I'm route planning and reinstalling weather apps that had lain dormant the 4 years we were on land. The Navionics subscription has been updated and routes from here to my nephew's house in the Chesapeake have been entered. Now all we have to do is hurry up and wait.

More water works...

Yesterday was day four of the one day service and fire up the water system job, and the task is not quite done. Parts that have been replaced include the head sink and shower faucet assemblies, the water lines to the shower, and the water lines to the swim platform shower. We also installed an additional filter for a drinking water faucet in the galley.  The leaks at the faucet assemblies laughed at new seals and “O” rings, thus the shiny new replacements. 

The old faucet with the old flat shelf that collected water which leaked past the very old, dry
caulking and showing the old pipe/hose combination.

The two water lines to the shower faucet caused a bit of a chuckle. One was marked “freon” and the other “heater”. The freon line was on the cold water side, and the heater one on the hot water side, so there is that. Both were so badly degraded that it is a wonder the water waited to reach the faucets before escaping and running to the bilge and on to its ocean home. (Which, come to think of it, it might have been doing.) A good bit of rotten wood and nearly as rotten craftsmanship was discovered when we pulled the panels holding the shower faucet. Said panels are being replaced with $80 worth of custom fitted ½ inch star board. That is the part of the job not quite finished yesterday as incoming weather interrupted the work day.

What was left of the rotten flat shelf

The leaks at the swim platform shower would have been a lot easier fix if the person who had installed the cover plate had actually positioned the access cover over the fittings. But with the plate removed, all that was visible were two sorry-looking copper pipes with the fittings themselves tucked out of sight. I struggled with it for a day or so then slipped off the end of my rope. The six inch access hole with the deteriorated and ugly looking cover went away, replaced by a nine inch shiny white cover through which one can actually see and touch the fittings. The last four feet or so of the hot water line fell to the metal blade of the magic tool to be replaced (as was to cold water side) with a new piece of flexible tubing clamped onto the copper tube at an accessible location in the cockpit stowage area.

As mentioned, the last of the water work—that being the shower rebuild—got interrupted by an incoming cold front and a whole different kind of water work. The winds cranked up in excess of 25 knots, sending rolling waves into the marina that struck First Light on the port bow, causing her to pitch and twist like an angry horse trying to get free of her stall. During the worse pitch & rolls the starboard rail was just touching the forward piling, another couple of inches and the rail would have landed on top of the piling, certainly destroying it and likely damaging the deck. At the stern, the hard top over the back deck was just brushing the aft piling. With help from the Skipper on the boat next door and timing with the rolls, we shortened up the port side bow and stern lines, trying not to loose a finger or break a wrist in the process. Down below was a bit of chaos as well as unsecured items were tossed all over the living spaces, particularly in the galley. We had some wild rides in Kintala as well, but I don't recall her every trying to bash herself to death on the pilings. It was a close call.

During a slight lull between the not-forecasted winds and the very much forecasted incoming line of thunderstorms, I hustled over to the store and bought $100 worth of new dock line. With help from the Skipper of our neighbor boat once again, Deb and I fixed the new line low on the pilling, up through the fairlead, and over to the cleat. As soon as that line was snug, First Light settled down. We still pitched and rolled but with far less enthusiasm. Once the winds had faded to a gentle breeze we reset the second port bow line down low as well. We also reset the forward spring lines to help support the bow line loads. There are now eleven lines tasked with keeping First Light in her watery corral. 

I couldn't take a video during the worst of it. This was after it had calmed.

The incoming line of storms being shoved along by the cold front looked menacing on the weather app and came with a forecast of some serious ugly. But other than a few really spectacular lighting bolts they  passed without near the drama of the afternoon's tussle. I have to admit to liking riding out such conditions being surrounded by really tall lightning rods - aka sailboat masts - rather than being one of those lightning rods.

As I finish writing this, we were able to finish up the shower rebuild today and can now move on to seeing if the head and holding tank actually work. I'm not holding my breath. (Though I very well might be, depending on what we discover.) Still, we are making progress, and are feeling pretty good about having handled the challenge of yesterday and getting off without a scratch.

Ta Da!

We needed one of the smallish grandkids to help install this filter back behind the sink

We chased down the shower sump location (in the engine room under a
hatch cover under a foam pad). and discovered it was full of moldy slimy water.

A little elbow grease and some Better Life All Purpose Cleaner (seriously if you haven't tried it,
you absolutely should stop what you're doing and order some) and it was clean and
shiny and smelled good.

The Road to Home(s)

Early Sunday morning we headed out for our first trip to First Light as owners. We were going to do it in one day again, a killer trip of 15 hours and change, but at least this time I would be able to help drive some. We were greeted with a nice sunrise to start the day. We chatted about what we would be ticking off the list, but we both agreed that this trip would primarily be a reconnaissance trip, a first date so to speak, us dancing warily around the boat to see if perhaps we might just have learned something from our previous experiences. I really have no interest in writing another book about our mistakes.

Arriving at the marina the next morning, we both looked on First Light with some cautious optimism. We worked the whole week ticking projects off the to-do list to make the insurance company happy. Mostly electrical things were being done but, being who we are, cleaning had to happen in between. One of the things bugging me was the underside of the cockpit hardtop which had developed a fairly decent coat of mold. While Tim pressure washed the rest of the boat to get the NC swampy green slime off, I had him hit the underside of the hardtop and absolutely nothing happened. The mold resisted. I had brought along my new favorite All Purpose Cleaner by Better Life, an ecologically sustainable cleaner, and decided to give it a shot. Wow. I was completely amazed because usually ecologically sustainable = no worky. It took a minimal amount of elbow grease and an hour or two, but the results were absolutely worth it. It comes in a quart sprayer and then also in a gallon of concentrate that lasts a really long time. If you're looking for a completely impressive and affordable boat cleaner that's kind to the environment, try it out.

It only took one night for me to feel completely at home in the V-berth. The bed is super comfy thanks to a very high-end custom mattress. After the toe-tootsie V-berth in Kintala, it was nice to actually be able to stretch out all of my legs on my side of the bed. There's good ventilation as well between the four portlights and the overhead hatch. Only time will tell whether the bow will be noisy at anchor. Fortunately, there is a very good anchor snubber at hand that should minimize the anchor noise.

Even with the lack of water in the tanks (she's still winterized and we're going to keep it that way for now,) the galley is wonderful. We bought a new electric tea kettle to heat water for coffee, which performed flawlessly. There's already a functioning microwave, something I never thought I would want or need, but reheating stuff quickly on a night passage is something desirable it turns out. The plan is to possibly get rid of the stove/oven combination and go with an induction stovetop and a Ninja Foodie air fryer/oven and make the existing oven space into more cupboards.  There isn't quite as much usable storage in the galley as I would like, and the areas are oddly arranged, but we have plans to add shelves to the hanging locker in the pullman berth and turn it into the same kind of pantry that I had on Kintala, which was enough to last us for several weeks.

Our biggest challenge is going to be the fact that our diet has completely changed since we were cruising before. Since we both gained a tremendous amount of weight in that six years (too much time at anchor baking cookies and bread...) we worked hard at losing it when we came back to land and don't want to go down that road again. The new diet is highly plant-based and requires a huge amount of fresh produce. The Norcold fridge/freezer performed well, but it is limited in space so we will have to make more frequent runs to the store. The Norcold was not up to the ice cream task, though. It froze bottles of water easily and kept them frozen, but the ice cream was very soft. In its defense, we did turn the fridge off periodically when we ran the vacuum and pressure washer because the electric at the marina is limited to one 30 amp circuit for the whole row of boats on the hard and there were other people using power tools so we were trying to be considerate. As a result, we can't really say the ice cream test was very accurate. The fridge portion did very well with everything we put in it.

In order to keep the suck-to-fun ratio properly in balance, we did find time to spend with our friends Alex and Diann of Yacht-A-Fun fame who introduced us to some new friends, Danny and Doris on SV Unicorn which is on the hard just down from us at Duck Creek Marina. We had some good beer, excellent food, and much needed laughs. Alex is a great tour guide, giving us some historical background on the city as we walked around for the annual MumFeast, a walking tour of restaurants in the historical area of New Bern, a tour that included several musical happenings and, of course, ended at an ice cream shop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we first started talking about transitioning to a trawler from a sailboat, I admit to being somewhat concerned. Sailors have this "thing" about them, something you can only really understand if you've experienced that sudden hush when the engine is killed; the sails fill and the boat surges, the water slipping by the hull with a soft swish. I was worried that somehow we would lose that connection with the water that made Kintala so much a part of us, so much our home.

After spending this past week on First Light, it became readily apparent that what made Kintala our home wasn't the big white flappy things in the air, it was us.  We were back in the groove, working easily together, reading each other's thoughts before they were uttered. The space that is First Light fits us well, but it is only a shell to hold that which makes it a home—the two of us.

So, for the time being, we'll make the road trip back and forth, each direction taking us to a place we call home. Our land home where seven of our eleven grandchildren live, and our boat home which promises to get us back to the four grandchildren cruising in Florida. Anyway you look at it, the destination at each end is as good as the one at the end of the rainbow.

Now if I could just figure out where we're going to put all these ukuleles on the boat...