We’ve been doing a lot more cleaning and organizing now that we’re living on the boat full time and she’s in the water! I can’t get away with “cleaning” by just moving shit from room to room anymore… I actually need this stuff put away so we can live here! One of the things that needed to be dealt with but I knew was going to be a pain in the ass was the gigantic tub of old fasteners.  A lot of this hardware is still usable and useful, but a lot wasn’t… so I sat on the floor for a few hours organizing everything by type, material, size, and length…

Another thing that literally every single boat out there has is a collection of old safety equipment.  Flares are required by the coast guard but they expire every 3 years and it’s usually illegal to set off flares so people just kind of keep them forever. (Our old 1972 powerboat had a locker literally *full* of just expired flares). This boat was no different.  I found 2 separate flare guns, shotgun style flares, a weird flag thing, and multiple chemical type flares.  Miraculously there was a package of flares that were still good (not including the pack that we literally just bought so we could take the boat out) and I kept the guns just in case they would be useful, the the rest of the stuff is garbage and I’m not sure how to safely dispose of it! My biggest surprise though, was this 25mm flare that apparently expired in 1981!  That’s older than both me and Jason and the boat’s a 2001 so it’s older than her too! My only guess is the previous owner of this boat brought all the stuff from their previous boat over when they bought it and it’s been there ever since…

It’s also been super cold down here in Florida… like in the 30’s at night.  Luckily we’re still at the dock and have shore power to use so we bought a heated blanket and a tiny space heater.  It’s still cold in the morning when I drink my coffee…

I also hung the little decoration that my mom bought me for the boat.  I had to rip off the cute little rope it came with and replaced it with some sturdy double sided tape!  Jason also insisted we have the tiniest Christmas tree… So there’s our little bit of cheer for the holidays!

One big task we had left was to get the dinghy set up now that we’re in the water and it’s easier to mess with it.  We rigged up a pulley and rope system to easily raise the lower the engine off of the railing and onto the dinghy.  It worked awesome and was way easier than Jason and I trying to muscle around that big awkward thing.

The dinghy itself was also hung suuuuper high on the arch, which is great for a passage as it’s out of the way and won’t be hit by a wave, but it also makes it a bit of a pain to raise and lower all the time while we’re anchored out and using the dinghy.  To fix this, Jason made another set of straps to use at anchor that are much longer and position the dinghy right at railing height instead.

We haven’t run the dinghy yet, but we filled it with oil and got a can of gas for it so maybe tomorrow we can run it around!