The boat got hauled out of the water and has been hanging in the slings on the travel lift for a few days while the yard painted the transom to cover up some repairs we did. Well, she’s finally back in her spot on land so we can get back to work!
Ironically, our big cruising boat does actually have a drain plug! We needed to pull that out so the boat would drain instead of filling with water.
Some of our stuff finally started coming in so we could install things!
I’ve been working on cleaning out all the stuff we took off the boat and shoved in the storage shed for months now. We finally got to the point where we could go ahead and empty it out and save some money! All that was in there was the cushions and bags of rope.
The ropes still had that “moldy old boat” smell, so I figured I’d throw them in the bathtub and wash them out! The water was black… literally…at least 4 washings worth. These things were SO gross. Eventually I got some of the smaller bundles cleaned up and set out on the patio to dry.
It’s been a few days now and I *still* have one of the large ropes in the tub because it has so much sand. We’ve just been showering with it in there. Free rinse, right? Eventually I’ll give up and hang it to dry and live with the sand.
So today I was going into the galley to put the ant spray in the cabinet and forgot that I left one of the hatches open and my foot slipped right into it. Bashed up my knee, shin, and arm… and pissed me off royally. Why is it always the stupid small shit that hurts the most? Meh. Either way, I wasn’t in the mood after that to do anything substantial so I fixed one random thing that was also bothering me: the sloppy latches on the engine room doors. The starboard side didn’t latch at all because there was nothing there for it to hook onto… the wood structure was damaged and just broken off. Awesome. The front door had a similar problem and needed more material for the latch to put pressure on. I had some leftover angle aluminum that I used for the starboard door and some weatherstripping as a damper.
For the forward door it really only needed a 1/4″ spacer, so I split a piece of scrap wood and applied super glue to the edges. The latch itself holds it in place for it to dry! Easy!
In other very exciting news we finally got around to putting the boom back on the boat! It’s also nice to get it off the deck so we can walk around again!
The boom was sitting on the old cockpit cushions. They were already pretty gross.. the foam smells, there are tears, and the zippers are falling apart. I threw them off the boat for their final trip to the dumpster.
One of the last major things we’re waiting on is the rear arch. Our boat has the handrails all fully welded out of stainless, so to integrate it with the arch, the shop needed them. This means that we can’t seal up the holes in the boat or install the galley cabinets until the rails are installed. Luckily, he’s finished with them and the final weld to the arch will be done on the boat! Tomorrow we can hopefully put them on the boat!
