Working away in Vero Beach

Although it has only been 1 week since the girls went home, we have been busy working away at our job list. It was great to take a break from boat jobs but now we need to get the more critical jobs done. We are paid up at the marina until Jan. 20, so we do have a few more weeks to go.

The new year jobs started with mast cleaning and engine work for Mark. I tackled our exterior wood – cap rails and rub rails. The mast cleaning and polishing went well but the engine work was far more complicated. Mark was replacing some copper lines (pipes) that are part of the fuel and steering system because they were salt corroded (from the leaky generator- another good reason that it’s gone!). It was a difficult job which required a lot of moving things around to get at the corroded parts, removing those parts and then replacing them. There were some moments of, well let’s just say unhappiness, during this job. A bit of leaking made a mess in the engine room and then the copper tubes were a challenge to make them fit properly. As of today, the job is done – Mark just needs to replace all the moved parts in the engine room. The real test will come either tomorrow (Friday) or Saturday. We have to move into a new slip so we’ll get to test the steering (which is one of the copper pipes that has been replaced)!

My job started with cleaning our teak cap and rub rails with this 2 part cleaner that removes all the crud from 2 years in storage. I was amazed at the stuff that came off – it was like mud almost. It took a few hours to do the whole boat (it’s at these times that I wish our boat was about 20ft shorter 😁) and then the teak needed to dry thoroughly for about 24 hours. The next day I applied 2 coats of the semco teak sealer. This sealer is really nice – super easy to apply (just use a clean cloth) and the 2nd coat can go down within an hour. There is still a bit more exterior teak to look after but the hardest part is done.

Today we went on a shopping journey! We went to Fort Pierce to drop off our old alternator (to have it rebuilt – it will be our backup) and continued south to West Palm Beach to buy some metal for the installation of our new wind generator and then we went to Costco!! We had a very successful day – lots of good food and drink was purchased!! I can tell you our freezer is working overtime right now!

The days fly by quickly on the dock! It’s hard to believe we are already a week into January! We are still figuring out our plan for the season. The Bahamas seem to be changing their entrance requirements daily so we’re still hoping to cross over in late January or early February.