A month of repairs and upgrades

[Hilde’s log]

I keep hoping that David will do a post detailing the repairs and upgrades he has done since we arrived in Pensacola. The list is long! As I am writing this, he is out in the cockpit braving some very cold breezes putting back together the junction box under the cockpit table and polishing the cockpit walls which end up collecting all sorts of black marks as he works on various projects. It’s really cold here in the morning, but fortunately warms right up in the middle of the day.

I helped him a little with servicing our winches. That’s the part of the boat that you wrap the sail sheets (ropes) around to help you pull them in. Sails are really heavy, so help is needed! Our two winches hadn’t been serviced in a long time and were hard to crank. David pulled off the covers and then unscrewed the five 8” bolts that hold the winch to the teak block on the deck. The bolts go through the foot of the winch, through the teak block, and then through the fiberglass deck. Unscrewing them was difficult; even the power screwdriver balked. After he got them off, David cleaned off any corrosion and greased them and reassembled them on the deck. My job was mostly holding the screwdriver against his wrench, or holding the box wrench against his screwdriver. Each of the winches took most of a day to finish.

Starboard winch with its guts exposed. It also got resealed (see white goo around the base).

Rusty bolts (some leakage over time), looking up at the winch base from the quarter berth. One of them broke! We had to get new ones online, as they are a size no one keeps in stock.

The port winch is reached through the port side lazerette, which meant a lot of unnatural bending and stooping to get at the bolts. The starboard winch is reached through the quarter berth and that meant taking everything out while we worked on that set of bolts. The good news is that I was also able to wipe down stowaway dust and clean it up a bit. 

David tucked into the empty quarter berth.

Me wiping down the dust.

What do we store in the quarter berth? All this that is shown filling up the main cabin. Oi.

David also put in a new jiffy reefing system that eliminated long dangling lines that tried to snag on everything and also let us, for the first time, have three working reef points. Sawing off some of the stuff already on the boom in order to attach the reefing rack took about three hours. Fortunately, I was off shopping and didn’t have to listen to the screech of the saw.

Three reefing points!

Jiffy reefing track installed.

The Walker Bay Hyperlon dinghy tube has taken some wear and tear, and David patched that up nicely. The glue that came in the original repair kit committed suicide at some point, but David looked on line and found that the glue he already had (3M 5200) would work nicely. Am happy to report the tube is fixed and firm once again.

Abraded dinghy tube.

One upgrade that made David very happy was convincing our AIS to display on our chart plotter. He also repaired the red and green bow light that went dark during the crossing and replaced the leaking water hose in the engine. Ditto the broken traveler.

It made me happy to note that he restored the gate wires across the access gates (where you get on and off the boat, either side, when you are not tied up to a stubby little finger pier but to an actual dock). It is scary to walk past them when you're at sea and have them be open to the water, even though no one should count on that slender wire to stop a fall. I guess it's mostly psychological.

The gate wire, which gives me a false sense of security.

David breathed life back into the outboard which came awake with a nice loud roar.

He added a red LED in the compass, which was dark the whole way over. Not a huge thing when you have GPS, but still nice to be able to check the heading without a flashlight.

In our mania to redo the teak in the cockpit we forgot to replace the caulking and got good and wet as punishment from King Neptune. The caulking is back in place! Gee, I hate a wet boat.

The toilet sprang a small leak on the passage, and David tightened it back up.

He replaced the night light in the engine water temperature gauge.

He also stripped, cleaned, and lubed the jib sheet foot blocks which eliminated a lot of screeching when handling the jib.

And me? I polished the stainless steel life rails. After all, gotta look shiny. I also administer tea, coffee, meals, and the occasional power bar and herd the laundry to the washing machines. I have my uses.

It's not all banging away on the boat, though. We take a walk almost every day. Here is a little park not too far from us where you can sit and watch nothing happen on the bayou.

We've also hooked up with old friends Sherry, John & Cookie, and Paul, and made new friends, Art & Mary Jane. Thanks to them all for their friendship and for providing lovely reasons to leave the boat and for schlepping us around in search of boat parts. The nicest thing about cruising is the people you get to know. We've also made contact with Gary and Linda, a couple we met two years ago when we sailed on a schooner in Maine who live here in Florida and who we will see when we get to Punta Gorda. Somehow, everyone we know eventually washes up near us.

Current plans are to leave for Punta Gorda around December 1st. Until then, stay warm and stay in touch!