Boat Projects – Advinspiration

As usual, boat life is filled with boat projects both big and small. We have a lot of big plans for the fall for Onward but for now we’re just hammering out the little things so we don’t have to squeeze them in later.

First up: adding a mirror in the bathroom that wasn’t installed by someone 7 feet tall…

Just the single, tiny, round mirror practically hanging from the ceiling

This larger mirror just sticks on and since I know Jason doesn’t care, I put it where it’s friendly to short people!

Next was our sewage system. There was something definitely wrong with how it was functioning since when you pumped out the tank it would pull water from the toilet as well… While poking around the boat earlier I noticed that the holding tank vent was made from non-sewage-safe water hose (awesome…) that does a neat little circle before it exits the boat. All of these things combined with the tendency for the vents to get clogged sent me to the parts store for replacements. I got an entirely new vent fitting for the hull and since we’re not in a place to upgrade hoses right now, I just cut the existing vent hose to fit up to it. But be prepared… an entire sewage upgrade is in the works since that’s one system that I don’t want to have to deal with when we’re underway!

Before. This is a violation of pretty much every plumbing rule ever made

Doesn’t that look like it’ll work better?

Shiny new parts on the outside of the boat! I’ll be the only one to ever notice this…

I’ve already done some work to the kitchen plumbing system with a new faucet and redoing the seawater rinse system, however I also wanted to install a UV purification system like we had on our other boats. I had the rerouted plumbing ready to go with just a tee to cut in to supply the UV system and the actual routing went pretty fast!

the little box on the right is the purification unit with its pre-filter and remineralizer

All hooked up! This is my third system so it took like half an hour this time

All 3 faucets! Drinking water, sea water, and normal water.

Our friend Rob met us at the marina in Merritt, NC to help us re-charge the refrigerant in our refrigerator compressor because it was so low it wouldn’t keep food cold. This did fix the problem and the unit is working like it was designed to however, the evaporator plate is way too small for this size of fridge. One end is frozen solid and the other end got up to 50 degrees so there was really no place to safely keep food cold. We decided that, unfortunately, it’s going to have to be ripped out and redone with a larger plate and new system because I don’t want to risk food going bad in the Bahamas!

essentially two compartments with the plate at one end and no good way to even store things stacked. So awkward and annoying.

We did have another mishap on the boat. When we installed the arch on the transom we knew that the structure there was kind of weak and had planned on reinforcing it substantially when we got to Florida. Unfortunately, Jason slipped while tying up the dinghy, pulled on it hard, and cracked the transom/hull joint. Whoops. We keep epoxy and filler on board so we mixed some up with some structural filler, filled the crack, and then clamped it until it set up. Hopefully that will hold until we get back and can do more.

see that crack running down the middle of the piece that sticks out?

of course we have epoxy syringes and nitrile gloves in stock. Halfass nothing.

The boat currently has a nice and fully functional air conditioner/heater installed. We would rather have the storage space back, so we ripped it out.

That’s a lot of cabinet space I can get back!

Me for scale. We had to remove the entire settee to get it out.

This crusty old 120v pump gets removed also

Since everything was pulled apart, I went ahead and deep cleaned all the compartments under the settee

Probably won’t store anything in here, but the place where the pump was installed is clean now also

We’ve also just generally been cleaning and organizing the boat and finding things we want to fix next time around.

The “door” is just two boards that slide into place. Super hard to get in and out of but there are also flies. current solution is a towel draped over the open door.

This is somehow all the shit that we brought from the boat. More organization on board will be required when we move on for real!

These bilges have never been cleaned…until now.

I put some rubber mats down in place of the mattress on the port side so the stuff we’re going to store there won’t slide around

The boat had really nice teak floor grating in the cockpit. It looked awesome but it’s super slick when wet and traps dirt and grime. We removed them and then had to thoroughly wash the cockpit floor.

The wires at the mast are located in an awful spot where the genoa sheet lines rub on them. So they’re pretty destroyed and on our list of things to replace, especially because we’re dropping the mast when we pull the boat out of the water. Each cable has its own little gland that it enters the boat through. While poking around I found that none of the glands were sealed and because of that, the wood used for coring in the boat was wet. I took a pick and painstakingly removed as much of the damaged material as I could. Just waiting for later to be able to fix this properly.

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