So I haven’t kept up with documenting it well, but I am happy to state that we will be going back in the water first thing Saturday morning. That means a huge list of projects are off the list and we get to go sailing again. Yeah.
For starters, and the biggie, Keith finished up the barrier coat-5 coats of vinylester resin. Whew! Thank goodness composite work is kinda what he does for a living. It looks great.
The hull and deck and bottom are painted. The toe rail is caulked and the stainless is polished. The shaft, cutlass bearing, prop, and rudder post are all finished up. New exhaust and bilge pump through-hulls were installed. Bye-bye rusty gate valves.
We added a new through-hull to bypass the grey water tank on the galley sink. And since Keith got to do all the resin work (since he plays with fiberglass at work), that left me to clean out the rotten maggot infested grey water tank (since, yep, it was that gross and, yep, I play with maggots at work). Note: grey water tanks are disgusting– especially if they are plumbed to the galley sink and not completely drained each time, like when you have been in the boat yard. Neither one of us got better end of the deal!
The survey is completed (what a joke) and we are working on getting insurance squared away.
And on the subject of money, we have been hemorrhaging it the last two months being in the yard. On top of the yard bill, we added a nice little car repair bill because some jerk engineer at Honda decided to place the starter so that the entire intake manifold, battery, and air filter housing has to be removed just to access the starter. Not a simple pop-it-out-pop-it-in job. A project we just didn’t have time to deal with and so to the shop it went. We will be eating ramen noodles for the next month to get back on budget.
On the fun side, we did take some time out to enjoy a visit from Keith’s brother Kenneth who was on leave from Saudi Arabia. He has started looking for another boat of his own to go cruising on when he retires and it looks like our schedules might match up and we could be doing some sailing together in a few years.
Wright Away Sails Away 