Month: November 2019

It’s so much fun to be in the USA at the end of November – we can celebrate Thanksgiving again! Today I cooked a turkey (13 lbs) and we had a very nice Thanksgiving dinner! It was a beautiful day – sunny and warm (sorry) and we spent the day doing smaller boat jobs.

The generator job is finally completed but not as successfully as desired. There is still an oil leak but it’s much less and it looks like the leak is coming from a place that can’t be reached unless the generator is removed from the boat (and that’s not going to happen this season). So the generator is going back into its place and Mark is moving onto other jobs.

Sometimes moving onto maintenance jobs can lead to more jobs. Our attention moved to the dinghy – we put it in the water and reattached the outboard motor to it. While doing this job, Mark discovered that the pulley in the davit on the motor side is broken, so now that needs to be fixed! It seems to always be that way, take one job off the list and add another!

I said it is Thanksgiving but more importantly, it’s the Christmas season and that is made very apparent by all the decorations going up in the marina and in the town. We went to St. Augustine to see their “Nights of Lights” festival. It was pretty and there were lots of lights but they were all white (and I’m not a huge fan of all white lights – I like colour!). We went with Jane and Steve (who left this morning, heading to the Bahamas) and had a great night out.

Our favourite thing to do is to chat with Evelyn and Caroline. We try to do an audio or video chat with the girls once a week using messenger. It’s so much fun to catch up on their week. In our last chats, we had some huge laughs with Evelyn as she told us about her conference in Washington. Our chat with Caroline involved some deep talk about wood and wall construction as Caroline works towards making a gallery space at her home – very cool and exciting!

It looks like we will be leaving Reynolds Park in the beginning of December to move to Berkman Plaza Marina. We’ll be storing the boat at this marina while we are back home for Christmas. We’ll probably be here at Reynolds for another week or so and then we’ll move and head home.

(All mizzen mast hoisting photos courtesy of Jane Holler – thanks Jane!)

It’s been a very productive week and we are starting to check off some of our jobs! Mark is working hard on the generator to fix the leaky oil pan. So far the crazy thing is still leaking and Mark is getting a little frustrated with it. The pan is fixed but there is still a leak and it looks like the chalking and paper gasket might be the culprits! Other new parts have been been installed (including 2 new mounting rails) and as soon as the leak is resolved, this job will be very close to done.

Exterior wood on a boat is lovely…most of the time! At the end of last season, our exterior wood was in bad shape. We decided to switch from the stain/varnish we were using (it was called cetol) and change to a teak sealer called Semco. The Semco product is very nice but in order to apply this liquid, all the old varnish had to be removed. We did the rub rails and cap rails in April and I applied a new coat of Semco to the 2 sets of rails early last week. Now I’m working on the other wood parts – it’s a long process but so worth it (check the before and after photos below!). I’ll be very happy once all the exterior wood is switch to Semco because maintaining it is so much easier.

One of the cool parts of cruising is meeting new people. The first week we were down here, we met a very nice couple from Wiarton, Jane and Steve. It’s been lots of fun getting to know them and sharing our job stories! It’s amazing how sailors have so much in common and can talk about sailing and our boats endlessly. Jane and Steve are heading to the Bahamas soon and are on their last jobs before leaving Reynolds Park. Hopefully we’ll see them somewhere in the Bahamas this season.

Just a few photos for you this week.

We’re at the end of our 2nd week and the weather has slowed down my outside jobs (I’m putting another coat of Semco on our cap rails) but Mark is picking away at the inside jobs. It’s been cold, rainy (but no snow – thankfully) and very windy – pushing us up against the pier and heeling us over (a very weird sensation when your sitting at a dock).

We have managed to do some things off the boat to give us a break from boat jobs. On Remembrance Day (or Veteran’s Day here) the Fort in St. Augustine had free admission, so we decided to visit it. We love St. Augustine – it’s one of the few Florida cities that has a “small town” feel about it. It also has a very distinctive Spanish style. We did a bit of shopping (West Marine and Ace Hardware – boat stuff of course), had lunch in the old city and then visited the Fort (just in time to see them fire the dreaded cannon that we heard last season!). This Fort is the oldest remaining fortification in North America and it’s quite small.

We have found another marina to move to for December and beginning of January. It’s basically downtown Jacksonville but it is just docks (no other facilities) which is okay. We’re still hopeful that we can stay here if the pier isn’t too full when December rolls around.

Mark is more than halfway through the big generator repair and it is going well. The oil pan is off and the little pinprick holes are being fixed. It’s a big job but should be completed in the next few days. After that, it’s time to move onto the routine maintenance things. Always lots to be done at the start of a season! This year our boat improvement is to get “Mac packs” for our sails. These things are sail covers that attach to the boom and stay in place all the time. Our current sail covers are big pieces of sunbrella (fabric) that we take off to use the sail. You’ve probably noticed them and if you’ve ever helped us put them back on, then you’ll know why we want a different system. These new covers will make protecting the sails so much easier. You just lower the sails as usual and once they’re down and in place, you just zip up the Mac pack cover – that simple (hopefully!). These bags won’t arrive until mid December so we have a job to do when we return in January.

While we’ve been busy with our jobs, others have been making plans to visit us this season. Caroline is confirmed again to spend 2 weeks with us in Turks and Caicos. She joins us on Feb. 23! Our good friend Jim Ryan will be meeting us also in T&C on February 28 and staying until March 13. John and Sadhana are looking into joining us at the end of March (again in T&C)! So we will have a boat full of visiting fun this season.

The weather has been pretty nasty so I don’t have a lot of photos this blog.

It’s that time of the year…sailing season has arrived. We left Kingston on Nov. 1 and drove south to Green Cove Springs, Florida. We made good time on Friday, stopping in Charlotte, NC that night and then making it to Reynolds Park Yacht Centre by about 2pm on Saturday, Nov. 2.

The boat looked great and the new cover we put on stayed in place! We spent Sunday and Monday getting all the out of the water jobs done. It was fairly easy to get ready to go back in the water (not like last season!). Tuesday’s launch was set for 9:30am. We arrived really early (7:30am) to get the dock lines and fenders all set and then we waited for the travel lift to come get us. It was after 11:30am by the time the lift was ready for us. By 1:30pm, we were in the water and tied up at the big Reynolds Park pier. We have a great spot – very close to the gate. This makes getting a wifi signal so much better – we can actually stream Netflix (but still can’t do a decent video chat).

Now the big boat jobs are underway! Probably the most challenging job is replacing the oil pan for the generator. This hasn’t started yet but there are plans on how to do this job. Mark has been working on other smaller things for the moment and I have been slowly cleaning the interior of the boat. (I hurt my back on the first day while pulling a bucket of water up to wash the cockpit and have been slowed down by it). We can only stay at Reynolds Park for a month, so we are looking for a new marina to leave the boat for December when we go home. Lots of fun!