Because boats are constantly in need of attention, Jason and I recently took a small road trip back to Jacksonville to do a little more work to the boat before hurricane season and summer really ramp up.

Because this boat has a furling boom, that means that raising the main sail up the mast has a lot more drag than a normal main and just requires a lot of effort.  Our last two boats have had electric winches and we really missed it.  So Jason found us a deal on one and we found the time to go ahead and install it.

Obviously the giant motor and wiring for the winch is an eyesore inside the cabin.  When we return this fall we will finish the wiring and hopefully find time to build a nice box around everything to hide it from view.

One of the main reasons we needed to head back to the boat so soon was that while putting her away we noticed that part of the floor under the pedestal was rotten.  Someone had added a thick piece of plywood to the fiberglass floor tub, presumably to raise the level so that all the teak cockpit floor inserts were the same level.  Over time that got saturated with water causing the pedestal to move around when steering the boat which just opened the holes up and let even more water in.  Luckily the boatyard has a stellar guy named Murphy who could easily fix whatever was wrong.  Jason and I got to work removing the entire pedestal, including the steering arm and engine controls.

Now we found another problem.  Because of the water intrusion and movement we also had some rot in the actual wood hull coring material in the boat itself.  That’s not good at all!

We got some pictures of the repair a few weeks later and it looks fantastic and now I won’t have to worry about it rotting away the rest of the boat!  The teak grate that goes by the wheel still fits perfectly! We may keep this panel since all the water and dirt will drain through it and out the back of the boat.

We spent most of our time at the boat getting all of our chores done, but we did spend some time with Jason’s brother and his family.

We spent a week working on the boat but we also had plans to go see our friend Ian because he just bought a fancy new fishing boat and a house on the west coast of florida.  I haven’t been to the west coast since I was a kid so it was interesting to see the differences.  His house is right on the Withlacoochie river, which is spring fed.  There’s a path from the house to his private boat dock over a crystal clear creek.  It’s really a gorgeous area!

We spent another week hanging out with Ian and his dad, going fishing, and just generally having a great time with old friends! 🙂