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Has it really been ONLY nine days? God, it feels like an eternity. We’re coming down the home stretch now, and the timing couldn’t be any better because I don’t think we can go on much longer. We’re at the point where our bodies and now our attitudes have taken a beating. When you’re running on empty, even the simplest task feels like it requires so much effort. And we’re getting all pissy with each other. No bueno.
With the finish line in sight, we’re powering thru the last of the remaining items on our list and crossing off the ones we’ve done with a big fat black Sharpie. Feels.so.good.
Underwater lights are done and look awesome. Seeing those babies shining in all their glory down below gave us a major lift, which was seriously needed at the moment. Matt and Aaron had been working until 12:30 the night before getting the sail drives back in and we (he) needed a quick win to stay motivated. Let’s call that one done, done, DONE.
Another one off the list was replacing those hideous faded teal pinstripes with a set of shiny new grey ones. Goodbye 1999, hello 2014! Applying the vinyl stripes wasn’t as easy as the instructions said (just six easy steps… right), but after a few tries we finally found a technique that worked for us. Let’s just say, thank God we have two inner hulls that no one sees.
I love how they turned out! Looks so clean and modern. The next step is getting the teal stack pack (the bag the mainsail drops into) switched out to a grey one and having the teal on the front sail replaced with a bright orange. Peace out, Teal. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
After our wet sand and wax (tentatively scheduled for Monday), our girl will be as pretty on the outside as she is on the inside. Foxy!
Compared to just a few days ago:
As for the bottom, it’s finally all painted. We had the marina move the jack stands so we could finish up the painting project. The grey below is the first barrier coat. We’ve since added another barrier and two coats of bottom paint, so it’s all black and lookin’ pretty sleek. Too bad all of that will be underwater and no one else but us (and all of you) will have seen it in all of it’s glory. Sail drives and props are sanded and painted as well. Sorry for the “in progress” pic, but I was totally losing the will to live at this point and didn’t have it in me to go back down the ladder again to get an “after” pic.
Automatic bilges are done. Another CHECK.
Matt installed them up high in the bilge box – about a foot from the bottom – so they’ll only kick on if the water rises pretty quickly. If we suddenly have a foot of water in our bilges, and the auto bilges kick on, then we have serious problems, folks. Let’s hope we never hear them run. We had to drill two additional holes in the boat for them to drain and, man, talk about nerve-wracking. Thankfully they’re above the water line, so we should be good. Hopefully.
I’ve since attacked that yellow scum line where the guys taped for the bottom paint with some industrial strength hull cleaner, and we’ve fixed/finished the grey pin striping. Again, I was just too lazy to take another picture. #tooexhaustedtocare
The plumbing is done in the bathrooms, which have been put back together along with a small portion of our sanity. I swear, the happiest Matt’s been all week is when that plumbing was done. He HATES plumbing. Let’s hope all of the seals are tight so we won’t be cleaning poo out of the bilge for the second time in a week. Good times.
Excited by all of these jobs getting checked off the list – which ironically seems to be simultaneously growing – we got on a cleaning streak and tried to put the boat together as best as possible. We literally had a huge contractor trash back and were throwing away bits of piping, wiring, soiled work paper towels, pretty much everything that wasn’t a tool or a necessary material. Except for a bolt to our engine. Yep, that was thrown away in the mix, along with six cotter pins, also necessary for our engine/sail drive configuration. Ugh! We broke out the gloves and began digging thru our huge bag of trash, piece by piece, in search for the missing bolt and pins. Good news is that we found the bolt (yay!!), but just two of the pins. Guess we’re going to West Marine again tomorrow. Yes, y'all... THIS is what we've been reduced to. Searching thru an entire contractor bag full of smelly & sharp object to find a damn bolt and six tiny cotter pins.
Remember how I said that we keep getting derailed with other projects not on our hefty list?
Another one reared up again today, right on schedule. We wanted to mark our anchor chain in 25′ increments so we knew how much chain we were letting out when we anchored. So, we gathered some red string and went to work. No big deal right? Wrong. After about 100′, the chain went from a nice normal steel color, to an angry red/orange rust color. Turns out our remaining 100′ or so of anchor chain was so corroded in rust, it kept getting stuck in our windlass so we were unable to lower any more chain. Problem. Look at this stuff! Looks like a piece of the Titanic decomposing on the ocean floor. THIS is what’s holding our boat in place? Oy vey.
We spent the next hour or so, banging the rust off the remaining chain and giving it a thick coat of WD-40. Imagine my pleasure when, after an extremely long day of busting our asses, I got to climb down into our anchor locker and scoop up rust chunks by the shovel full out of the bottom. It sucked, but it was totally better than Matt’s job of beating the rust off the chain. I promise you, it’s not always a glamorous life, this sailing thing.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, than this one pretty much sums up our feelings at this point.
So, yeah. We’re in the final stretch and really running out of steam. We’re stressed and tired and it really, really sucks that it’s Labor Day weekend and people are out having a blast all around us. Funny, this Labor Day we’re actually laboring instead of relaxing on a three day vacay. That’s OK – they can have their three days. We’ll take the next year off on our sabattical. Boom.