Thanksgiving Fun

The past week has not felt very productive as it involved lots of eating, some drinking, with a lot of part ordering and manual labor in between. Laura has been slaving away repainting the headliners which previously looked awful full of mold and stains. Matt has been doing lots of small odds and ends as well as slowly piecing the interior back together.

                                         
                                          The dinner spread

                                          The forward cabin

                                       

                                           The nearly complete aft cabin...just turn your head a little

It feels like the work list has not gotten any shorter. Each time I cross ten things off I add eleven other things. The big stuff we have left is as follows:

- Rebuild the Aries wind vane

- Get propane tanks test the stove/ oven and get a grill

- Install all the main salon head liners and put the rest of the interior back together

- Install new stainless deck hand rails

- Put on new exhaust hose for engine

- Install new alternator for generator and test operate

- Install new electronics (gps, vhf, ssb receiver, some sort of system to send and receive email at sea, a kicking stereo system so we can rock out

Hopefully many of the parts and pieces we ordered in the past 2 weeks will arrive this week which will keep Matt busy installing it all. We are itching to get off the dock and go somewhere soon!                                          

The Can-Can Challenge: Take 2

For our second can-can challenge, I picked something I had high hopes for, something I remember as a kid and I'm pretty sure my Dad still eats on a semi-regular basis.  Corned Beef Hash.

Another one of Hormel's products, the corned beef hash on label doesn't look very appetizing, but I've had it before, and as far as I can remember it wasn't too bad (loaded with hot sauce).  So this taste test was really for Matt.  It was a good thing he didn't do the cooking though, because I'm sure it would have never made it to the plate.  Open the can and you will find, wait, what, is that dog food?!  I guess you could feed it to your dog, but it isn't dog food persay, although it looks and smells like it.  Just hurry up and get it in the fry pan, when it starts crackling away and turning from pink to red, it actually starts smelling good.  You have to keep pushing the hash around so it cooks evenly, scoop it up and flip it, and start the process over again.  I liked to have it pretty crispy.  Served with eggs over easy, toast, fresh squeezed oj and english tea, corned beef hash is a WIN!

Which brings us to the next part of the challenge, now how much should we bring?  Well, even with tabasco, we didn't like it that much, so we'll have to see what kind of units we can buy it in at BJs.  If we had it once every two weeks, figure 4-6 month supply,  I guess maybe we'll be packing up a dozen cans of it?  At least we know there's some hope for the canned foods out there.

Back at the Home Dock!

YAYY!!!!  We are finally done waking up at 0530 every day to get every ounce of daylight out of our yard period.  It worked out well, we did what we needed to do and even a little extra - the last two days were spent cleaning the interior and buffing the hull.  Here's a few 'before and after':

                                These ones are just - wow!

Here's one of the prop and completely rotted off zinc anode.  That's really important, because the zinc anode corrodes before the bronze prop, we put a brand new one on there on purpose, which is why they are known as sacraficial zinc anodes.  And we buffed our prop blades and shaft - no more drag on this baby, going to be SUPER fast!

Ever wonder why people with huge muscles are 'buff'?  That's because they do a lot of this:

called buffing!  That buffer is sooo heavy and hard to control!  I only lasted about 3 hours, Matt did all the rest himself.  No bluff!

Here's another set.  If you look closely, you may be able to tell that there is a slight difference in the red paint about a foot below the waterline- that's because on top of the two coats of Trinidad SP anti-fouling paint we put on, we added a generic coat of ablative paint.  Ablative paint flakes off when we wash barnacles and scum that have grown on it off.  Since the waterline is a real problem area, there was no need to go any further, it will just make sure our anti-fouling paint lasts longer.   

An item of concern came up when we got splashed at low tide, the brand new very expensive all-in-one tacktic wireless depth sounder/speed log/wind indicator didn't seem to be working.  It was reading a lot of mud, and there is no way to adjust the gain :-(  It seemed to be working a lot better after we got underway back toward the house, but we're not too pleased.  It doesn't seem to be as sensitive to depth changes or display speed at very slow speeds.  Is it possible the slings from the travelift messed it up?  I hope not, but the manual isn't very helpful, so we'll try a few phone calls tomorrow.  

Speaking of phone calls, the teak cockpit grating we dropped off to have repaired should be done this week.  We also got an update from Cape Canvas, who finished our spray dodger and a few cushions, which they'll bring back later this week.  Very exciting!  

That's all for right now, time to regroup, get back to organizing our 'punchlist,' and have a celebratory cocktail.

Yard Week Day 2

Hello again.  It's that time of the day, the sun has gone down, we've packed up all our tools, and have finished working for the day.  It was pretty productive:  finished sanding the bottom and self-steering rudder, put in new through hull for depth sounder/speed log, replaced seacock for head discharge (very important!), fiberglassed blisters on rudder, barrier coated area on the hull around the shaft that we had to fill with west system, and rinsed all the dust away.

I'm pretty happy that the sanding is over with, and I really am starting to believe this boat will be looking good soon.  Tomorrow we have to pick up some specially ordered stainless steel bolts for the zinc anode mounted to the hull near the shaft and prop, and start painting (the easy part)!  With any luck we just might be able to get splashed back in the water on Monday, so fingers crossed for that.

Matt's Mom stopped by earlier and snapped a few photos of us in the middle of it, as you can see, we pretty much have our hands full:

Hell week day 1

So its 7pm, the end of day one at the yard. Today went pretty well, knock on wood. We got the boat hauled, pressure washed, bottom surveyed, and Laura sanded 40% of the hull. How she is still moving around I don't know, because it was an exhausting day.

We are fortunate to be surrounded by friendly people so far. Marty Maier came by and offered some good advice, and this Asian looking dude, Joe, working next to us offered lots of advise and some help. I sure hope this good Karma or whatever, and the good weather stick around for us.

Cleaning Roach Poop

Laura has decided her next career will be in roach poop cleaning. Our friend Bevis, AKA Sean snapped this great picture. Laura, where is your respirator, you may inhale roach particles....fear not internet friends, its not really that bad

Boat work

So in the past week we have not just been sitting around eating spam, that was just one awful meal to fill our bellies between all the hard work. Tasks accomplished since last Tuesday, Nov 1:

-Installed new bearings in Turbocharger and re-installed on engine. This was no fun, the parts are tiny and delicate. After this somewhat torturous test of patience the damn thing doesn't work any better and still squeels like a pig. This is probably caused by unfortunate things like that the engine has either excessive blow by, leaking injectors, or a combination of things going wrong in the combustion chamber all of which cost way too much time and money to fix. So for the time being the engine runs on too much fuel, oil, and a lot of hope (it worked for our country, so why not my engine).

-Re-installed heat exchanger on the engine

-Ordered new fridge (concluded the old one was toast)

-Got canvas guys started on new dodger and cushions

-Re-bedded most of the main deck fittings (over 100 holes)
-Began deep cleansing the interior (lots of dead roaches and roach poop)

Tomorrow we begin what I have nicknamed Hell week (something that happens when wannabe frat boys get tortured). We will hopefully get hauled out and begin the underwater work. With some luck this wont take longer than 5 days. The yard charges us $60 per day to be there, so we will be working full blast to get out of there ASAP or our wallets will be empty and the CapitalOne collectors will come knocking. 

Some pictures of our fun:

Turbo in pieces

The bearings I hoped were responsible for the excess turbo noise

Ladders loaded for boat yard fun:

 Capt. Laura taking us to the yard.