We have a lot of tiny projects that we’re trying to finish up before we go on our road trip!

Today we finally measured and squared up the hardtop for the dodger and bolted it to the brackets. It’s really sturdy up there!  It looks really good! Now I just need to stop being lazy and trim the existing canvas so that it can actually be installed instead of just dangling precariously from the dodger frame!

I also noticed that we have a leak right on top of the new mattress… and also right on top of where my face is going to be when I sleep.  This isn’t acceptable, especially since it was leaking through the switch in the light housing! 😮 We finally narrowed it down to a bolt at the front of the jib boom, so hopefully we can address that tomorrow. (I don’t want my new mattress to get damaged before I even get to sleep on it!).  For now… I have a solution. I added a bucket later…

And now an update on the prop shaft that we removed a few days ago.  Kyle pressed a shiny new bearing into our shaft log, so that’s good to go! However, they also inspected the shaft and there’s too much wear and corrosion so they recommended replacing it.  Which is… unfortunate.  On the plus side it’s not nearly as expensive as I thought it was going to be, so that’s good.  We’re just going to have the boatyard reinstall the whole thing, including a new split flange to attach to the transmission, so we don’t have to hammer a chunk of steel off of the shaft ever again!

On another note… we’ve started moving out of our apartment! I didn’t realize I’d only done the lease until October, but since we had to delay our big road trip we might not be back in time!  Extending it another month jumps up to $2500 for a month of rent! So… We’re just going to move out and couch surf with the wife of a guy we met on a sailboat group on Facebook! 😉 It’ll be fun and it gives us some time to drive around the country as long as we want to.  But.. now we have to get all of our shit out of the apartment! We moved here with all of our worldly possessions in a 5×8 cargo trailer and I feel like we’ve gotten rid of a ton of stuff since we’ve been here… but now… I have another truck load of stuff to take to goodwill and I’m still sitting here on the floor in a nest of all of my junk wondering where I’m going to put all of it on the boat! 😮 Moving from a 1 bedroom apartment into a 1 bedroom, well, bedroom.. is definitely going to make me reevaluate all this stuff yet again!

It’s definitely going to be a busy weekend! Hope I have time to at least grill a burger! 😉