Category Archives: Boat Work Projects

220. 221. Whatever It Takes.

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“I hear loud banging from your boat…are you trapped? Do you need rescuing?”

It’s so nice to live in a neighborhood with people who care.  I was taking my evening constitutional along the Foss Waterway when I received that text from one of our neighbors in the marina. Mike was alone on Galapagos. Was he imprisoned and struggling to free himself against dastardly criminals? Not this time. The sound she heard was the one that a small sledge hammer makes when it hits thick fiberglass below the waterline. Sound travels well by water and Mike was in full demolition mode while I was gone. In spite of how it sounded, he was not actually destroying the hull. It’s simply this: we’re back to boat projects.  It’s not enough to actually live on a sailboat. We need to be working on it as well. It’s been a nice break during the holidays but fun time is over for now.

Just look at this useless bottom shelf.

Mike was giddy with excitement when we moved aboard. He couldn’t wait to get up at 5:00 in the blessed AM, walk to the train, work a full and boing day analyzing airplane data, reverse the commute, then come home and start working on the boat. His pleasure is sometimes my pain, but I still don’t know where he gets the energy for this. It was with a certain amount of glee that he began our current demolition job. I say ‘our’ only because I get to watch, hand him the shop vac, and then I will get to do much of the finish work. Mostly at this point I praise his efforts and manliness when he is destroying things.

On the short list has been a desire to remove these huge fresh water foot pump enclosures from beneath each sink. They exist, right there in the middle of the easiest-to-reach storage space, should you want to have fresh water in the tap without using electricity. We understand the desire to be able to circumvent the electrical pump system should it break down, and we’ll be putting a hand pump at the sink in the galley during that coming refit. (We will also be carrying extra water in jugs, because that’s how I roll to appease my Amy G. Dala.) Our boat was built in 1974, a time when people had fewer choices in terms of creating their own electricity on their vessels. These foot pumps would have been necessary while at anchor back in the dark ages of my highschool years.

Now we have solar panels that crank out the amps, and pumps that draw very little power. The water to these foot pumps has been turned off for so long that the valve to turn it back on is almost frozen in place. To try to turn this valve will be to break this valve. That’s how much the foot pumps have been used.  Every time I go to put something away underneath a sink I’ve been irritated by these ungainly fiberglass housings. Why did they need to be so darned big? Seems Demolition Mike was irritated, too, so out came the tools of destruction.

One thing about our 1974 boat: everything is built hell for stout. Those Greeks really knew how to build boats to last. Mike had to power through close to an inch of fiberglass and heavy mahogany plywood. His tools of choice: the handy Ryobi multi-tool with flush cutting blade, a bottle jack for putting pressure on the cut pieces, a small sledge hammer for when the pieces fail to yield to the bottle jack, a pry bar, shop vac, and extra batteries for the power tools.

It felt a bit like sacrilege to remove such well built equipment. The original  pump, made in France,  was plenty corroded on the bottom, but it would probably still work if cleaned up. There are no moving parts. Just a seal to create a vacuum. The stainless fittings, however, are now a permanent part of this unit as the marriage of dissimilar metals put together has taken hold and they have become one.

I think it literally causes Mike pain to throw equipment like this out. We’ll probably put this on the free pile in case some soul is in need of an extra boat project.

These cabinets will finish out nicely and the extra, easy to reach, storage will be welcome. We can store a ton of toilet paper here! Or big bottles of vinegar and stuff. So excited! It’s the little things that bring joy.

Oh yes, we know those hoses need replacing. It’s on the list. We’re not very happy about it because it’s going to be a right pain in the butt considering where the thru hull is located.

Another small project has been replacing light fixtures. Why have only one project when you can have multiples? We live in a world of plenty. The boat came with several boxes of replacement bulbs for all the various types of light fixtures on board. We have incandescent lights, florescent lights, and halogen lights. They are all taking up too many precious amps, and there are too many different kinds of bulbs, some of which may be obsolete for all we know. Many of the fixtures have seen better days, like the sconces in our main cabin. The plastic shades are cracked and even more yellow than they should be due to age. So even though they work fine, we’re switching them out to these new ones with LEDs.

We found a nice source of attractive LED light fixtures on Amazon and ordered some to test out. We are quite pleased with both the quality of the construction and the quality of the light, especially for the price. Of course, we are not talking ‘marine’ lighting here. But when you consider that the light will last for at least 50,000 hours and there are no bulbs to replace, this is a bargain for us. Mike was sold on the amp draw: just .24 amps. Does that mean I get to use my milk frother while at anchor? Since we have extra amps and all…

We’re replacing some of the reading lights in the cabins with these little fixtures below.  They are smaller than they look but they put out good quality light that is the right color. I avoided LEDs in the past because the light was always too far on the blue spectrum for me and I didn’t like it. Blue light can be agitating. The technology has caught up and by choosing a warm white color we’ve been entirely pleased.

In addition, we tried these nifty little LED bulbs that work with our incandescent fixtures as they are also size ‘e27’, referring to the screw base. The quality of the light is very good, and they look like a regular bulb. We chose the warm white bulb and are quite happy with the results although they are very bright. We may see if this brand has some that put out a little less light. But this ‘win’ means we get to keep the fixtures we already have in the aft cabin.

I have a couple of larger projects on my list that I’m seriously procrastinating on. One involves paint and one involves that aft cabin. I’d like to tell you more but it’s making me tired to think about them.

For your amusement:

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Best of 2016

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It’s that time again: time to usher in another Baby New Year with his sagging diapers.  Just when I was getting used to writing 2016, along comes usurper 2017. This is the year we plan to leave the dock. If all goes well, (knock on all the wood in sight), we will be cutting our lines sometime in June of this year after a long haulout in Olympia. We’re kind of flexible about the date, but not overly so. You’ll notice we’ve never posted an actual date of departure, in spite of the common wisdom that says ‘if you don’t choose a date you’ll never leave’.  We think posting a date is tantamount to throwing a gauntlet of challenge down in front of the gods. No, thanks. We’ll know when the time is right, and you don’t need to worry that we’re the kind that has to have everything perfect. Nothing has ever been perfect in our house or on our boat and that has never stopped us. Safe, yes. Perfect, no. 

By way of reflecting on this year, I’ve gone through all the blog posts to see what we’ve accomplished. Here are the highlights from 2016 I like the most and think are worthy of a second look. It was hard to choose because I tell you what: if we didn’t have a blog, I wouldn’t remember 10% of what happened this year. A lot happened.

And another thing: the blog is over 5 years old now and has 351 posts. No one, including me, is ever going to read all of those. Also, if they follow the trajectory of our path to here from there, they will know we are sailors by the way we tack back and forth until we get a good tailwind to push us forward. We’ve accomplished a lot, but we’ve been all over the map sometimes doing it. Life. So it goes.

The Best of 2016

This post gives you my top secret recipe for sugar-free Chai Tea. It’s still a winner and I brought Mike a huge container of it for the boat. Great Cuisine of India is still one of our favorite places to eat. We had dinner there last night after a day of helping the kids move things around back at the ranch (house).

Warm and delicious.

By February I was already well into almost panicking about the house, the plan, the life, the everything. Why? Is it because I don’t want to go sailing? No. Is it because I can’t live on our boat? No. It’s because I have an anxious brain that gets into trouble if I don’t give it something to do. And I had a lot of downtime. Still, I remember that time as one of sometimes stillness and a gentle appreciation of my home and garden. I did spend the last year just loving on our home.  Now Andrew and friends are living in the home and keeping Skippy well and happy. Things sometimes work out. I’m glad I have this post for many reasons, not the least of which is the photographs of the hellebores. When they bloom this year, I’ll go over and teach the new generation how to look for them and care for them. 

In April I participated in the A to Z Challenge and wrote a post every day. It was pretty brutal but I’m glad I did it. My chosen topic, Anxiety and Sailing, was well received. It’s amazing how many people have to deal with anxiety in this world. If you aren’t sure about the difference between general worry and anxiety, then you can start reading about it here. Better get settled because there are thirty posts about this topic. I made this fun ‘fear-o-meter’ to help teach people about how anxiety builds up to sheer panic. Now what do I do with it? I’ve threatened to take it with us so I can use it to ‘splain to Mike where my brain is at then he tries to anchor too close to rocks. 

Our Rumpus Room was one of the projects we completed in anticipation of moving aboard. It’s turned out to be a cozy and comfortable space to watch movies, just the way we planned it.  We’ve also been happy with how our fun and functional cockpit mat has continued to make our cockpit cheerful and easy on the feet.  This was the year we finally got an Aft Cabin makeover.  We sleep like babies in there.I

After living in fear that someone would visit our boat and literally turn their noses up, in September we finally solved the Case of the Mysterious Smell and also discovered we have a ghost aboard the boat. The ghost was not, actually a surprise.  The mysterious smellI was a difficult case that turned out to have multiple solutions, the final one an easy but obscure one. Yeah, it’s all easy once you know the answer.  And so far, we’ve been smell-free. We’ll see if things stay smelling sweet when the weather warms up.

All the fun of home!

Also in the ‘smell’ department, this was the year I took matters into my own hands and used Science to determine which holding tank treatment was going to work best for our toilet paper of choice. The winner was Zaal NoFlex Digestor. Challenged by some of our readers, I went further and upped my game, using our dogs as donors for the test ‘materials’. It was an interesting project and we are please to report continued good results using the Zaal product. We aim to be informative here. Watch out, Practical Sailor Magazine. We’re coming for you.

We hardly left the dock this year due to boat projects. I guess that’s pretty normal when people still are working for a living and are getting a boat ready to go cruising. The worst part of that was not having a long cruise this summer. Mike is saving his vacation time. We both were sad as the summer wore on and no cruise was in sight. To help, we did take a fun trip down to Jarrell Cove to see our friends. We also joined a race boat crew so we could get out on the water every week. That was a great decision. We made good friends and reminded ourselves why we like sailing. We would be glad to join the crew next season except WE WON”T BE HERE!

On a mooring ball for the first time.

It’s been an odd, emotional year and I’m glad it’s over. It’s nice to finally have made the move aboard so we can get settled and get used to calling this ‘home’. Even though it’s a big adjustment and there are moments when I just grieve to be back in my house, on the whole, things are going well. We have a lot to be grateful for in spite of the growing pains of adjustment to this new lifestyle. Now that the New Year is upon us, Mike will go back to work for a few more months and I will create a routine that includes getting back on track with my ‘lifestyle choices’. Ahem. And I will schedule time each week to go see our Skippy dog and give him lots of pats and love.

We have a considerable galley re-model on the horizon, so stay tuned.

Here’s to a fresh year! Happy New Year to you, wherever you may be.

 

 

 

 

 

Weekend Update Ramble

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Contrary to what it may look like, I haven’t abandoned the blog completely. And there’s actually a lot going on. Here’s the news in brief:

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One more year to enjoy the fall colors in the yard!

We have a move aboard date from the marina of December 1! We’ll be trickling down to the marina probably after the holidays. Originally, our plans were to move aboard November 1. Andrew and Jill have moved into the house, and they were to be joined by another young couple, John and Melina,  to share expenses and keep the house in the family for awhile longer. That plan needed to be changed when the marina had no room in the proverbial inn on the November 1 move-in date. Oopsy! That created some considerable stress for about a week or so.

But as is so often the case, this roadblock turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Also on November 1, Claire and Dan came home from Guatemala for 6 weeks. We narrowly avoided a situation whereby Claire and Dan would be moving in while John and Melina were moving in while Mike and I were moving out while Andrew and Jill were moving into our room from another room. Whew! It makes me tired just to write that extended sentence. And dealing with all the furniture moving? Ugh. Crisis averted, John and Melina will wait until after the holidays to move into the house. Thanks, guys! We love you.

More fall texture.

More fall texture.

As a result, we get one more holiday season in the house, with all our kids and their significant others! That makes me real happy. Since Dan and Claire will be in Edinburgh for Christmas this year, we decided to combine our Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays and celebrate what we are calling ThanksMas. So on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, while the rest of the country is out shopping and keeping our buy-more-stuff economy strong,  we’ll be safely ensconced in our family room opening stockings, drinking mimosas, and playing some pretty awesome games to celebrate the whole season. There will be prizes. Oh yes, definitely. We will make it a day to remember.

While I’m pretty stoked about ThanksMas,  I notice that it’s really put me off my holiday stride. With 58 holiday seasons under my belt I’m used to having a certain amount of time to gear up for the traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas. First we get Halloween out of the way, then I begin to consider the Thanksgiving menu. Decisions are not actually made until well into November. I don’t generally get out the Christmas decorations until the day after Thanksgiving. I better get my ass in gear since we’re living in a small time warp around here. Ho ho ho. Maybe a tiny tree for Galapagos? Just saying…

And speaking of Galapagos, things are in full swing getting ready for the big ‘move our crap aboard’ that will be happening in December. To be fair to us, we don’t have a lot of stuff anymore. We’ve pared down so much that I’m not really sure what we’ll be bringing with us except for our winter clothes and personal items. Everything else is already there. And we are so good at tossing things out now. Really good. My dreams of having a boat that isn’t always a complete disaster inside could actually come true.

We have a lot of charts and chart books. They will get their own special place.

We have a lot of charts and chart books. They will get their own special place.

Along these lines, to create easier stowage, Mike has been fitting all of the hanging lockers with deep shelves like we did in Moonrise. This makes those nice big lockers so much nicer since we now get to use all that vertical space. This is a bigger project than it sounds. In a house, closets have square corners and they are usually the same size all the way from ceiling to floor. On a boat, each shelf is a different size and micro-shape. It takes a long time to get a shelf to fit just right. Plus, what if the boat is moving when you are using that level to get the shelf just right? Everything has to be complicated on a boat.

He experimented with using wire shelving in this aft cabin locker. It turned out fine but it’s likely to be noisy underway unless I dampen the sound, which I will do. Still, we are dead pleased about how each of us gets an entire shelf and big bin of our very own! The other lockers have wooden shelves as the wire just wouldn’t work in them.

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In preparation for moving aboard, we have also put in an additional dehumidifier. We have a large one in the main cabin. It’s a GE and I bought it at Home Depot. It’s been excellent. We bought this additional small unit for the aft cabin. We are very pleased with it. It uses desiccant technology and puts out gentle heat, which helps keep that room both warm and dry. This unit we got on Amazon. It drains directly into the bilge, so we don’t have to empty it all the time. Galapagos is a big boat and has a lot of good ventilation even when she is closed up. But we have had a very wet fall so far. These make the interior a lot more comfortable and will help keep mildew at bay as well.

Our new dessicant technology dehumidifier. Love it!

Our new dessicant technology dehumidifier. Love it!

Mike is also working on new lifelines as I write this. And guess what! They are RED! Yes, Galapagos is getting dressed up in her party clothes, ready to rumble, ready to set sail. She will ride the waves in style with her pretty red dyneema lifelines. He’ll do a separate post on how he worked all that out, and also give you his ‘cheap boat trick’ cost-savings secrets. I am excited to have lifelines that do not hurt my hands when I grab them. Seriously. Of course, eventually that dandy red color will fade in the hot sun. At that point, they will be pink. So pink and turquoise, our hull color. Galapagos rocks the world of color.

The only downside lately is that I think my beloved camera may be dead. Mike took it in to be serviced recently and the guy said something like, ‘Why service cameras like this? They are basically disposable. You should just buy a new one.”.  I think the camera may have heard that and his words acted as a curse of death. This was not a cheap camera when I got it and I don’t really want to have to buy a new one. But damn. Should I expect more than 3 years out of a mid-range camera? I have a little more experimenting to do to make sure it’s actually DOA, but until then, I have to live with cell phone photos. And so do you, readers.

Finally, I took some readers up on their challenge to further my experiments with the tank digester. There will be another blog on that subject forthcoming. More experiments, using real SCIENCE,  are in the works. That’s the nail biter I’m leaving you with.