Finally we’re back on the water!! It’s been a long week living on the hard and to top it all, our final night on the hard was spent in the travel lift slings, suspended about 10 inches off the ground. The very last spots under the stands needed to be painted and left to dry for 10 hours – that’s why we spent the night just hanging there.
The good part about the wait for the propeller shaft was that we were able to focus on a lot of other jobs and had time to complete quite a few! The days have kind of all blurred together but there has been a few stand out moments.
It’s been the time of the saw! The old air conditioning units have been removed and that required some cutting of copper pipes, wrestling with heavy units and motors plus lots of wire cables being moved. The new units have been put in place but are not connected yet – that’s a job for later down the river. The aft unit went into the new spot very easily with lots of room to spare. The spot for main cabin unit, which is larger than the aft cabin unit, needed a fair amount of adjusting – out came the saw again. It was a noisy, messy job but with some ingenuity, Mark managed to get the unit to fit.
The new inverter took a bit of time to install. It fits perfectly in the old inverter’s spot but the wiring for the new one was a challenge. Mark managed to get all the wires connected and the inverter box was secured in its new home in just a few hours. That job lead to the purchase of a new microwave! Our old one was all rusty and disgusting so we decided to look for a new one. Lots of choices and they’re cheap!!
Our final big jobs were all done on the last day (Nov. 14). We started the day by moving the 2 heavy water maker boxes onboard. We used our main halyard to hoist both boxes onto the deck and then into the cockpit. One box contained the 2 – 45 inch membranes and the second box contained the pump. We next moved onto clearing out the compartment under the floorboards below the main cabin table. This compartment held one of our original water tanks. That tank got holes several years ago and we ended up cutting the top of aluminum tank and placing a rubber bladder in there. Now the bladder is gone and the whole top of the old water tanks has been removed. The two membranes are secured in this space and the pump will be going in another storage compartment under our cabin seats.
While this job was ongoing, the propeller shaft arrived!!! So the water maker job stopped and we went to work on the new shaft. Before we could start work on the shaft, we quickly had to remove the forestay because the travel lift was heading to us to complete our bottom paint job. The cutlass bearing had been installed at the beginning of the week so we were good to put the shaft back in by ourselves. Mark added a “dripless shaft seal” that complicated the job a bit. Fortunately the new shaft was a perfect fit and the re-installation went well. As we were working on the shaft, the final bottom paint was going on the spots where the boat stands were placed and under the keel. At around 4pm, we went back to work on the membrane install and then cleaned up the main cabin! It was a long, very productive day.
It was an early morning today (Nov. 15) – up at 6am and moving to the water by 8 am. Our launch was smooth with no problems. Once tied up at the launch dock, Mark started the engine (always a bit of a tense moment) and it ran like a charm!! We had a very windy morning so getting off the launch dock was a challenge but getting onto the pier was even more fun!! We had wind and current pushing us into the pier. Good thing we had Brad and Julia helping us with lines and muscle power. It took some strength to keep us off the wooden platforms on the pier and to get our fenders in position. In the end we tied up at spot 12 and sighed with relief!! We’re back in the water at last.
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 