Category: Sailing Return 2021 – 22

It has been an exciting few days of new purchases aboard Crimson Kathryn. With the death and removal of our generator, we had to make some decisions about how to replace the power loss. As I mentioned earlier, the generator was needed to run our water maker. So if we wanted to make water (which is super helpful in the Bahamas), we needed to buy a water maker that runs on 12 volts (and not 120 volts).

On Wednesday (yesterday) Mark placed an order for a new wind generator and our new 12 volt water maker. This water maker will run off of our house batteries and will make 1.5 gallons of water/hour. It’s quite a change from our old one which made about 30 gallons/hour. But the old one was super noisy and needed the generator. This new one can run all day on the batteries while the wind generator and the solar panel recharge what goes out.

Also on Wednesday, we picked up our new spinnaker from the sail loft in St. Augustine. We really loved our old spinnaker and enjoyed running downwind with it. Our new one looks good and might be slightly smaller (which is not a bad thing). It’s mostly white with red and blue. It’s really hard to tell until it’s full of wind. I’ll take photos when that happens!!

Today (Thursday) we did a big drive down to Fort Lauderdale with our car full of our v-berth mattresses. We decided it was time to replace these 40 year old cushions so our guests would have a better night’s sleep!! The company that is making our new mattresses seem great. They took our old ones as templates and will garbage them for us! Our new mattresses should be ready about Dec. 16, well before the Dec. 23 arrival date of Evelyn and Caroline. We also bought a new house battery on our way back in Stuart. All in all it was a very good day but after 11 hours of driving, we are both pretty tired!

The demolition and removal of the old generator started early Sunday morning. Mark headed into the engine compartment with a hack saw, large wrench, big hammer and lots of determination. At first parts were coming off fairly easily (as easy as can be expected with a 40 year old machine that has lived in a salty environment for most of those years!). I moved these smaller parts onto the pier to get them out of the way.

By 10am, it was time to tackle the main generator body, weighing in at about 400 lb. Our friend Steve came to join in the fun and together with Mark, they came up with a plan. We had lots of left over carpet from our main cabin so Steve came up with the idea of wrapping the generator up like a burrito and then sliding/rolling it out of the engine compartment. The first challenge was getting the generator passed the main engine – no easy feat! The 2 men lifted the greasy, dirty generator on top of the engine and rolled it out into the passage way. After that it was relatively easy to slide/push the generator out of the passageway and up to the base of the ladder.

The next step required a whole lot of discussion – how to get this 400 lb piece of dirty metal up and into the cockpit (about a 5 foot lift) with just 2 guys. There was talk of finding 2 more guys to help dead lift it but that seemed risky (my back hurt just thinking about that scenario). In the end it was decided to use our chain hoist to lift it out. At this point, we stopped for lunch and then went on the hunt for some blocks of wood and a 4 x 4 piece of wood that the hoist could be secured to.

Okay it’s time to lift this sucker out of the boat. Slowly it rose off the floor and headed towards the companionway opening. As it reached the top, it became obvious that the hoist itself was stopping the generator from getting to a good height to be pushed into the cockpit. Down it went, back to the floor!! Round 2 – I suggested turning the generator on it’s side (it’s taller then it is wide), so the hoist hook was moved to the side. Up it went again – Steve was cranking on the hoist and Mark was guiding it up. This time it made it high enough to get into the cockpit but when Mark and Steve started to maneuver it towards the opening, it got jammed on both sides.

This was when all hell broke lose!!! I ran over to help Mark push while Steve pulled and twisted the generator to get it unstuck. As we were doing this, the wood and chain hoist holding our 400 lb piece of metal fell aside and we were left with a generator wedged in the companionway opening. No panicking allowed at this point (that’s what I said in my head). Quickly Mark tossed the rope securing the carpet around the generator to Steve and Steve tied it around the binnacle. Once the generator was secured, Steve gave it one good twist and it slid into the cockpit. There were a few minutes of stunned reactions and then some major celebrating. We got it into the cockpit and no one got hurt (and we can use the boat again!😁)

Once the generator was in the cockpit, it was a little easier to move around and after a bit more pushing, sliding etc, the generator was on the wooden dock beside our boat. Now it had to be lifted another 5ft or so to get it onto the pier. With the help of 2 more men and our car, the generator found a new home on the pier and our boat lost about 500 lbs of weight.

At the end of the day, we headed over to Jane and Steve’s boat for happy hour which turned into an awesome dinner!! It was a great, tiring day followed by a great evening. Monday was definitely a low key kind of day!!

Our American thanksgiving celebration was a great success. We had a small turkey that fit perfectly in our little oven! And the price of this turkey was less than $6 US (it was an 11 lb turkey). Jane and Steve joined us around 4pm, bringing yummy appetizers, a pecan pie and a pumpkin pie. We all ate well and were very full!!

Friday started off slowly. Mark and I were still full from dinner so we relaxed with our coffee. We spent a bit of time looking at the job list, trying to figure out what jobs we wanted to do. Sometimes you just look at the list (which never seems to get shorter) and say not doing that today. I settled on a load of laundry and then I cleaned and installed our enclosure handrails.

Mark decided to try the generator and immediately regretted his job choice. The 40 year old generator started up with no problem but Mark quickly discovered that it wasn’t making any power (it’s one and only job!). Okay he pulled out the manual for it and tried to figure out what’s wrong. Well, after a few hours of hammering, grinding and other noisy tool sounds, Mark realized the generator was dead! Not coming back from this last storage season. So the decision has been made to remove the generator (piece by piece) and replace it with a wind generator. We’ll be a very “green” energy boat with our solar panel and wind generator. We’ll also have to replace our water maker because it runs on 120 volts (which the old generator supplied). Not sure if we’ll get the new water maker this year – we’ll have to see how things go with installing the wind generator.

There’s never a dull moment living on an old boat. She has lots of aches and pains, just like her crew!!😁

It’s funny how the days just seem to melt together in an endless stream of jobs. But today (and yesterday) we made some very visible and functional progress that really makes us happy at the end of the day.

Two big jobs were accomplished on Tuesday. Mark spent a few hours getting the dinghy inflated, cleaned and then moved from the bow and secured onto its davits at the stern. After the dinghy was moved, the bow deck needed some major scrubbing! We found some interesting things under the dinghy – a very large cockroach (I’m so glad it was outside and not inside!!) and 2 very cute tree frogs. Okay I just learned (literally- I wanted to find the name of these frogs so I googled them) that these are Cuban tree frogs and they’re an invasive species in Florida. Oops – I saved the 2 on our boat – I didn’t want to feed them to the fish (or the cold water) so I released them onto the pier.

The second job was cleaning the v-berth. I spent about an hour washing the walls, cupboards, ceiling and floor. We’re looking at replacing the mattresses so I took lots of measurements, created a sketch and took photos then I sent all these off to a marine mattress place in Fort Lauderdale. Hopefully they will reply with a quote and timeframe that works for us. In the meantime, now that the v-berth is clean, our storage unit (i.e. the v-berth) is available for all our miscellaneous items. This really helps free up our living spaces so at least we feel better as we look around the main cabin.

Today (Wednesday), we started our day working on more functional jobs. Mark spent the morning replacing the joker valves in both heads. He was the Joker King today!! The joker is a small rubber valve that allows water to be pumped out of the toilet and keeps that “ water” from coming back into the toilet. Well you can probably figure out that when the valve isn’t working, the toilet keeps filling up after you empty it!!! Not a really bad thing when it’s just river water backing into the toilet, but not great when it’s the holding tank. Now both heads are working perfectly!!

I spent the morning emptying out the locker in the galley that holds all our plastic containers and other stuff. All the containers needed washing as well as the locker itself. It was a great opportunity to sort through all the containers we have and keep the good ones. That was the last area that needed cleaning in the galley. After these jobs we took a break and went to Jane and Steve’s boat for a coffee and conversation. It’s so nice to have friends in the marina who are going through all the same stuff. We have lots to talk about, that’s for sure!!

After lunch we continued to work on jobs. Mark repaired our freezer which wasn’t working. He called the manufacturer about a week ago and got excellent support. The owner knew exactly what was wrong, sent a new part and now we have cold storage!! While Mark worked in the galley, I emptied the main cabin, removed the old carpets and washed the floor. The next job was cutting our new carpet pieces and fitting them into place. We had so much carpet that we made a little piece for the v-berth and one of our neighbouring boats grabbed a 2ft x 5 ft piece for their boat.

All in all, it was a very good 2 days!! That day of rest really helped us charge our batteries!! Tomorrow (Thursday) is American Thanksgiving and I’m cooking a turkey plus other yummies. Jane and Steve are joining us for dinner! We’re really looking forward to celebrating with Jane and Steve and relaxing!!

I think we were both super excited to have a day off from boat jobs. We woke up early (before 7am) and had coffee and breakfast before heading to the lounge for our showers. Mark made a few phone calls and we headed out to St. Augustine before 10 am.

Our first stop (okay we did boat shopping today) was at “The Irish Sail Lady” to see if our spinnaker could be repaired. Back in April 2020, as we were crossing from the Bahamas to Lake Worth, our spinnaker caught on one of our anchors (while we were nicely sailing along) and ripped badly across the whole width of the sail. The sail people in St. Augustine took a look and said it would be more cost effective to buy a new used spinnaker (which is what our ripped one was when we bought in 6 years ago). So they helped us find another spinnaker and it is being shipped to their location. The sail folks will take a look at the sail for us to make sure it’s okay.

Our next stop was a flooring outlet where we were super lucky to find a remnant piece of carpet to replace what we currently have in the main cabin. The current carpet was purchased back in Port Charlotte and it definitely needs to be replaced.

As I went into Michael’s (need more yarn to crochet another blanket!), Mark spent a bit of time on the phone, ordering our new “portlights” (I would call them portholes but this company doesn’t use that term). We are replacing all of the portholes on the boat with these new ones. It will be a big job but there’s no real hurry to install all of them this fall. There are a few current portholes that leak, so they are top of the list to be replaced once the new ones arrive.

When we returned to Reynolds, some of our Amazon orders had arrived. One in particular caught Mark’s eye and he’s calling it our printoaster. It is a toaster but it has a tray that makes it look like a printer. It’s a relatively small toaster so it fits in the space we have but it also has a slide out tray – very cool. We’ll try in tomorrow morning.

So it’s back to boat jobs in the morning. Hopefully we will feel refreshed and ready to tackle the new jobs on our lists. We have a couple of cooler days coming but it is supposed to be sunny so outside work won’t be too bad.

It’s Sunday night and we’re relaxing in the main cabin after a busy day of boat jobs. The cleaning and organizing is coming along well and so is the leak repair. Mark finished the galley leak repair today so I was able to return all the dishes back to their spots. We were both getting pretty tired of squeezing around all the dishes on the main cabin’s table.

As we work through our jobs, the list of needed items gets longer and longer. We had to get rid of some of the old items on the boat because of the long storage time. Some things like the galley and aft cabin mats, plus the main cabin carpet all need to be replaced. Home Depot, Walmart, Target and ACE Hardware have become our go to places to buy all these replacement items. It’s fun and a bit frustrating trying to find exactly what you want, but things are coming together.

When we first started working on the boat (about 1.5 weeks ago – seems longer 😁), Mark said we would take a day off when the boat was liveable. Well we reached that goal today!!! So our plan is to take tomorrow off (Monday) and head into St. Augustine. We’ll do a little shopping but mostly just walk around and relax. It will be nice to not fix, wash or store something, even if only for a few hours!

We have now been tied up on the Reynold’s Park pier for 3 days and we are into the dock groove!! You have to adjust to being on the water but not at anchor. When you’re at anchor, the boat always faces into the wind which makes for a more gentle stay. When you’re tied up on a dock, the wind can move you around (or tilt you) in different ways. We’ve been very fortunate so far to have had good weather. Today (Friday) has been the first day of strong winds, making us heel over slightly.

Today we had a great “sundowner” visit with Jane and Steve. It was so nice to relax and chat with them. Jane and Steve are learning about their new boat and discovering all it’s secrets. It was great to share successes and struggles with a couple who are also going through the same thing. Mark and Steve have lots of fun exchanging ideas and solutions for boat problems and challenges

Our days have been filled with constant jobs. Our main goal was to get the boat “liveable” and then we would take a day off. Well we’re still working and our “day off” hasn’t arrived (although it’s now planned for this Sunday!!!😁). Mark has spent his days trying to seal all the deck leaks we have that are allowing water to seep inside the galley and storage areas. I have spent my days cleaning mold/dust and dirt from the interior of the boat. We also used our Airbnb unit’s dishwasher to clean all of our dishes which gave me the opportunity to recognize the galley.

Back in April 2020, we left all the boat fabrics (towels, sheets, etc) tied up in green garbage bags. Unfortunately we returned to find all these fabrics needing to be washed due to the lengthy storage. It’s a lot of laundry time so I’m doing it a little at a time

Everyday poses new challenges for us and we are working our way through them. I can honestly say that I have not worked this hard or this constantly for over 19 months (since the last time we were on the boat), so I’m pretty tired by the end of the day. It’s super rewarding when you look around at all the work you accomplished in the day and you go to bed feeling very satisfied (until morning when you see how much more needs to be done – oh well, at least it’s warm and there’s no snow 😁😁)

Crimson Kathryn is back in the water after 19 months on the hard!! She is a very happy boat today! The travel lift arrived at 11:15 am and we were in the water and tied up at the Reynolds Park Pier by 1:30pm. It was a great day and we’re very excited to be afloat.

This post will be short on words (I’m pretty tired tonight), but long on photos! This is our last night in the Airbnb. Tomorrow (Wednesday) we’ll move onto the boat full time. Our wifi may not be as good on the pier at Reynolds so our posts may spread out a bit!

The cleaning and fixing continues as we inch closer to our launch date. Mark and I have spent the last 2 days working on a variety of jobs to get the boat ready to be splashed! It’s incredibly rewarding to see all our hard work paying off and I can say that we are ready for launch!

On Sunday, Mark finished all the through hauls and he cleaned the inside of the fridge and freezer – now that was an interesting job!! We moved the sails out of the cabin and onto the deck and I continued cleaning the main cabin and other areas inside the boat. The last job of the day for me was to set up our enclosure! After being stored for so long, it was stiff and hard to work with. By the time I got to the last side, there was about a 1/4 inch gap between the zippers! We just left it overnight, letting the sides stretch and relax. It was all good by Monday afternoon.

Monday rolled around way too quickly! I started the day doing laundry (washing all the cushion covers and bed coverings). I also finished cleaning the galley. Mark spent the day working on an emergency rudder (just in case we need one at some point). After that Mark did battery checks, engine checks and maintenance and also made sure the bow thruster batteries are good.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is our scheduled launch day! It looks like we will be splashed in the afternoon so that leaves the morning to do our final jobs. We’ll clean up on deck and around the boat. We’ll attach dock lines and get fenders ready. It’s really exciting to finally be at the point of putting C.K. back in the water!!

Well we’ve been working hard on our boat jobs for the past 2 days and we’re starting to see some progress. Mark spent Friday and Saturday working on all the through haul valves (there are 8 in total). These valves allow us to close all the “holes” that lead to the water. These through hauls let us drain our sinks, decks, toilets etc. It’s super important to make sure each of these valves are lubricated well so if one needs to be closed, it can be! By the end of our working day today (Saturday), all 8 were fully functional!!!

I have spent the past 2 days working on washing all the surfaces in our boat and I mean ALL the surfaces plus inside cupboards and shelves. Mold and dust has spread everywhere and it took several cleaning methods to remove. Some areas that were really bad received the mold control treatment (a special cleaner designed to kill mold on the surface and penetrating deeper) and other areas were wiped down with vinegar and water. After the initial vinegar treatment, all the surfaces were washed with pine-sol. I am super happy to say that the main cabin and the aft cabin are now clean and look amazing.

We are working hard to get the boat ready for launch which is schedules for Tuesday, Nov. 16. There are a few more jobs that need to be completed before the boat goes into the water and that includes checking all the through haul exits and changing the zincs.

The start to our newest boating season has been quite challenging. We certainly never dreamed the boat would be in such a state. It was very discouraging at first (and second) glance but now that we’ve made headway on the cleaning and some of the jobs, it is looking much better. We do have a few surprise things to replace that aren’t working like the microwave and it looks like all our batteries need to be replaced . These batteries provide power for all boat systems (including starting the engine) when we are not plugged into shore power.

We still have 3 days before we have to move out of our Airbnb and onto the boat. We will continue to work on our jobs so Crimson Kathryn will be in ship-shape when we move aboard!