Pier Life

There’s a certain pattern and rhythm to being tied up at the Reynolds pier. The days kind of blend together in an endless list of jobs and shopping for those jobs. It takes a few days to get your boat legs – lots of up and down ladders and climbing into small spaces. Your body slowly adjusts to “boat yoga” as Mark calls it!

We’ve now spent our first weekend on the water and it has been very productive. We had an initial list of jobs that made the boat more livable- that’s important when you’re in a small space. To start it all off, we decided to relax on Saturday . All we did was some grocery shopping and then we had a wonderful happy hour with Julia and Brad on Alizarin.

Sunday rolled around – an hour earlier, so we started on the many “make the boat more livable” jobs. First up the sails were removed from inside and I finished cleaning the area blocked by the sails and the forehead head. These jobs were quickly completed – always nice to have fast jobs at the beginning so you can cross them off the list (very satisfying).

The next job was to reassemble the 2 salon chairs. At the end of last season, the internal wood frame of both chairs broke. At home over the summer, Mark took the chairs apart, rebuilt the wood frame and then reupholstered the chairs. They look amazing!! The wooden legs were left onboard so a few holes needed to be drilled to reconnect the legs. Unfortunately the new wooden dowels didn’t line up with the old holes in the chair legs. As Mark tried to coax the leg into place (with a hammer) the strain became too much and the leg cracked in two! Another job to add to the list!! A little epoxy fixed things up in no time!

With that job temporarily on hold, Mark turned his attention to the hot water tank. For some reason it kept tripping the gfi circuit and we had no hot water. To access the tank, the main cabin ladder has to move and the large floor board between the galley and the nav. station has to be lifted out of place. Fortunately this was a very easy repair – Mark had removed the hoses to drain the tank last spring but had forgotten to replace them so we had no water in the tank! The only minor issue was that as Mark was replacing the hoses he dropped a screw and had to retrieve it in the bilge. The head first retrieval strategy normally works but not this time. It took both of us to get Mark out of the bilge.

The rest of the day went very smoothly. I did the semco treatment on our exterior teak cap rails. This is a fairly easy outdoor job but it’s hard on the back! Mark installed a couple of new shelves in one of the storage lockers. All in all, it was a good day!

On Monday we had another early start to the day – not liking this time change business. Job one was to go back to reassembling the chairs. This time things went much better and the two chairs were back to normal in about an hour. Next we tackled the sails. We started with the jib, then did the main sail and finished with the mizzen. All sails went on easily but it’s always a memory game trying to remember how the sail covers and lazy jacks go on!!

Our last job for the day was the dinghy. First it needed to be cleaned both on the bottom and flipped over to do the top. It wasn’t too dirty but it still needs to be done. Once it was looking pretty good, we hoisted it off the bow and onto the water. Next the outboard motor was lowered into position on the transom and then the dinghy was secured in the davits and hoisted back out of the water.

Getting all these little jobs done is great. We’re getting closer to the big deck painting job! That will be a process!!