Improvements

Dock Day 14-18 San Diego, CA 10/15 - 10/16/2016


Tim will address his challenges with repairing that gooseneck! The snapping of the screw tap was the most unbelievable for me, I was right there when it happened. It was not a fun project for Tim. We will be scheduling a rigger to come and make further inspections.


Today, I once again tore the bed apart to take out the full boat cover, it’s designed for full boat shade in tropical places. The previous owner said there were some modifications that were needed. I wanted to know what those were so I could get working on those. This cover was down in the storage space under the middle of our v-berth. I finally had to have Tim help me get it out! Canvas wrestling that wore me out. We had to figure out how it went on the boat, it’s always a puzzle! It zips apart into two pieces. After it was fully installed over the entire boat, not including the top of the mast of course, there were no alterations needed. Yes! That is great! I am happy not to wrestle it through my sewing machine as these two pieces are bigger and heavier than the dodger.


Tim and I decided we needed to get a set of king-sized sheets with a fitted bottom to help the bed stay all tucked in instead of us getting wrapped and tangled in the sheets. We did another shopping spree to Walmart (it’s serious stunt shopping for Tim). We purchased some nice Egyptian Cotton sheets and other organizational items and repair items and called it a day.


The next morning, I loaded up my little red wagon with 4 bags of laundry and headed to our marina laundry mat. I was there once already today, it was full again! That would seem to be the way it would be on a Sunday, and people were waiting. I was ticked! So I announced to Tim that I was going to go to a regular laundry mat and just get this massive pile of laundry done! Tim got his repair list together and found a place to drop me off to work on the blog while laundry was going. The washers cost 75 cents more per load at this new place. I had four loads of wash and three loads of dryer. I think I will figure out when to do laundry at the marina and maybe do a mixed load two times per week.


With the freshly washed sheets and a major workout to get that fitted sheet under the nova foam and existing cushions in about 30 minutes our bed was ready for sleeping. Our bed is so much more comfortable now! We don’t like to get out of bed because it is so comfy.


I also did a rework of some of the storage areas and made another shopping trip to get storage solutions. As we have been using our boat’s storage we have had a chance to figure out what is working and what is not. My solutions have turned out quite well in the way of containers.


Tim and I also went to work on the industrial storage area, the lockers in the cockpit! We went through each one and talked about what was there and what needed to be moved. The stuff that needed to be moved then had to be placed somewhere else. We have a pile to be added back to the storage under the v-berth, yeah…remember it took 30 minutes to make? I’m waiting on this one until I’m fully sure what is going there. We are much happier with the organization now. We have three lockers in the cockpit, two of them we climb into to empty or fill. We will have to post pictures of what some of our storage areas look like now.


Sea Day 15 San Diego Bay, CA 10/19/2016

Gooseneck test day. When we were here at this marina during the summer we made a number of friends. Our friend Fernando was away on a trip when we arrived here. He has returned and wanted to sail with us so today he joined us on our sail out into the ocean a ways and then back. We left at 1230 and returned at 1730. The winds were light but we had a nice sail. The main purpose was to see how things performed after the gooseneck and dutchman repairs. All seemed to be good. Fernando says we got the right boat. He enjoyed the helm time.


Sea Day 16 San Diego Bay, CA 10/20/2016

Yesterday, Fernando introduced us to David and Paul. Paul took some US Sailing classes at this marina earlier in the year. Paul would like to cross the Atlantic Ocean in the next four years. We love having conversations with other people who are considering the cruising boat life. Here in San Diego there are a few mainline boat types and the marinas are full of them: Catalinas, Beneteau's, Juneau's and Hunter's. From our perspective these boats fall in the spacious, party boat category. They are not a very fun sail in winds over 15 knots, nor are they a comfortable ocean ride. If you have sailed these common boats in higher winds and in ocean swell or confused seas, the difference is clear if you were to sail our boat in the same conditions. Paul has been sailing on a 36 Ft. Catalina in Michigan and has never sailed in the ocean.

Tim and I love connecting with people! We love to hear about their lives, how they have arrived at the place they are today, and so on. We love to ask ourselves the question: “Why not?” We had had a brief conversation with Paul and David yesterday, Paul was from Detroit, an Attorney who took US Sailings' keelboat certification. They were very keen to look at our boat and ask a ton of questions. We traded information and told Paul we would gladly take him sailing so he could experience the difference of lake sailing on a Catalina 36 and a blue water boat like ours. Today was our day, Paul invited us to brunch to pick our brains so we went to Kono's in Pacific Beach and then we invited him sailing. "Why not?"

Paul got to experience the checklist preps to pull out, our disagreements about where to raise the mainsail, and so forth. As we were coming out into the bay, it looked like the winds were promising. It was forecast as a light-wind day. As we headed for Ballast Point the winds picked up. I gave the helm to Paul with just the main up. After a bit we unfurled the jib and sped up almost 2 knots. The winds were awesome! Out into the ocean we went. Swells were 3-5 feet, winds were 15-17 knots and it was so much fun to see Paul experience this all for the first time! He was like a kid on a carnival ride, hooting and hollering. We had a great time. The winds were getting pretty strong and we should have reefed the mainsail before turning back. We had to reef the jib and ease the main. We were sailing in 19-20 knots, with an apparent wind of 22-25kts. Once past Point Loma and heading into the channel the wind just died. We fired up the engine and headed back to the slip. That was a fun sail! Finally, some good winds to work the kinks out.

I truly enjoy watching and listening to Tim when he works with other sailors who are new to the craft. Thanks Paul for coming along!


Dock Day 19 San Diego, CA 10/21/2016

Maybe I should rename some of the dock days to shopping days? Tim and I spent all afternoon today shopping for items for our boat. Everything from new equipment to repair/replacement supplies. There are some big sales happening tomorrow to prepare for the kick-off of the cruising season. I’m sitting in Starbucks to write because something on one of our devices sucked up a ton of our data. This is a love-hate relationship for me as the man’s cologne near me is suffocating me! Remember that when wearing colognes and perfumes, it’s not supposed to knock people over or announce you are here!

Today we purchased the system needed to monitor our power usage and battery conditions. We are about 30% converted to LED, but we are soon to be all LED. We will be doing our best to reduce or power footprint so we can add solar to our system. Best practices is to convert and add whatever you will need that uses power, then plan and install the solar.

Another system we needed to buy parts for is the holding tank system. Yes, the poop drama again. No, not really, we have this neat little machine called a macerator pump, mastication means to chew, so this pump is between the black water holding tank and the marine exit. We are allowed to dump the black water waste when we are three miles off-shore. Remember the poop drama? Well, the pump is seized up so we could not dump the tank. Thus the ensuing of the previous poop drama.

We like manually operating equipment when it is appropriate. Since our marine head has a salt water flush, the salt in the black water most likely caused the rusty crusty condition in the macerator pump. We have purchased a new macerator pump that is manually operated and contains few steel parts. It will pump 17 gallons a minute so it becomes a two minute job to empty our 25 gallon tank if it is completely full. That should do it!  It is a Whale sanitation pump. As with any job like this, once started it has to be completed, we decided this is a start first thing in the morning kind of job. Do you remember where the holding tank is? Yes, it’s under our v-berth. The time to tear the bed apart will be with this job. Once the job is done we will stow that pile of stuff for that space. Maybe we had better buy that holding tank sensor now too?

Tim has spent the evening wiring in LED’s into our small cabin lights. We put in a red light by the nav station, two lights in our cabin and a white/red in the head for underway at night. Way less wattage for more light! I love light! We are making good progress on our go list, that’s the list that we made to be able to leave long term. When the list is done, we leave!