Updates, May 17th to the 20th

Blog Entry May 17 to 20 2010

Well things have definitely slowed down on the boat work front. We took a brief reprieve as Dave had minor surgery on Monday the 17th to repair a small hernia that had cropped up sometime in the last couple of months. Don’t know when, there was no dramatic “oh crap, now I did it moment”, just a small lump in my abdomen just below the rib cage. Pretty cool, it would bulge out and I would press it back in, gurgling all the way (the bulge). It was pretty funny. Well the doctors didn’t think it would be a good idea to be possibly 2 days away from a hospital at sea with that. Too many bad things could go wrong if it decided not to retract. Pinched off bowel, the whole nine yards. So with that, we decided to get it fixed asap.

I noticed it in early April, so we tried to plan all the heavy lifting to be done before the surgery, cause believe me, I am not in any shape to lift anything now. Just don’t make me laugh, cough, sneeze or god help me if I get the hiccups. There was an area of weakness in one of my 30 year old incisions that finally had had enough. Well, it is fixed now and I am on the mend. Although right now it doesn’t feel very good, in spite of the percocet #10’s.

I have lots of “Light Duty” projects lined up that will keep me very busy for a while as I heal up. Stuff that has to be done: install the chart plotter/gps, AIS, radar, weather radio, weather fax, antenna switches for the SSB/Weather Fax, and the AIS/VHF radio. Install the new stern light, put a new plug end in the short shore power cord, sand and varnish the new spice rack, mount the new Barbee (ya matey, time for some shrimp eh), install the new smart battery charger, install a ground new buss instead of having 27 ground wires all connecting to the engine mount, it works but it’s kind of messy looking. We are still debating on the permanent location of the TV and the book shelves that will go behind the table on the forward wall of the main salon. And the list goes on.

The only heavy stuff to do is to rebuild the windless. The heavy part there will be taking it off of the deck to get it delivered to the powder coaters. Installing the new toilet in the forward head is another item on that list. Maybe that’s a job for the admiral. I can provide lots of direction from the salon seat with cold beer in hand. UHHHH, I don’t think so.

Speaking of the book shelves, what a rude awakening that was. I thought the teak was expensive in Seattle. I can’t find, or just haven’t found any ½ inch yet, so my current option is to buy 4 quarter and have it milled to ½ inch. The 4 quarter prices is $50/board foot. Well for the dimensions I need (10”wide) that will be $50 per lineal foot, plus the milling charge which is by the hour. I only need about 25 lineal feet. So if you do the math real quick you can see that the book shelves will have to wait until I either find a cheaper source of teak, decide to use a different material (yeah, like that is gonna happen), buy a winning lottery ticket, or I get a real job again. I know, Patti can go back to work for a month or two. Works for me. (Don’t tell her, ok)

We will be replacing some of the inside lights in the boat. I am a huge fan of LED’s, and in fact had added LED lights to our Ranger 33. They are very efficient, some only using 0.1 amps. The current lights on the boat are older Halogen or incandescent that not only put out lots of light, but also get very hot and use 2+ amps. As you boaters and RV-er’s know, amps rule the roost. Anytime you can reduce your amperage consumption, you save on battery charging time. That’s time running the engine, the gen set, the wind generator or the solar panels. The current lights get so hot that you can burn yourself. That’s another concern, eliminate one more source of heat in the cabin. It’s already 90 in there, don’t need any more heat.

We do have a small wind generator now, but with no charge controller and it being a 20 year old unit, it probably does not have a built in voltage controller, I am reluctant to turn off the external limit switch. Don’t want to fry the batteries. The new wind generator will go in about the same place.
I did figure out how to mount the new solar panels. There is a boat here from Virginia, just here for bottom work and then north like us. Burt has his solar panels attached to his lifelines. That’s what I am going to do also, just aft of the mizzen shrouds. The rails there have stainless tubes instead of cable, great for mounting all kinds of stuff and is actually referred to as the push-pit.

The POD is nearing empty, well it’s down to 25% of where it started. To tell you the truth, I have no idea where all the stuff went. We have taken a very slow and methodical approach to our storage plan. A lot of the stuff in the POD was galley stuff and books. Those are the 2 things that there is plenty of room for on the boat. There is actually more book shelf space on the boat (after I get the tools stored that is) then we had used for cruising books at home, good news. The galley storage just goes on forever. No problems there either, at least not yet. ( Patti is at Walmart right now, no telling what galley gadget she will come home with this time) There are 2 places in the galley that you have to check for stow-aways they are so big. Tools may be the biggest challenge, and as my father is fond of saying, I have way too many tools. The truth of the matter is that we haven’t even started to put stuff into the nooks and crannies yet. The V-berth is virtually un-stored except for the stuff from the P.O.’s that needs a home. There is still lots of room in the head storage areas and the areas under the floor boards has yet to be utilized except for the medical kit.

Speaking of medical kits, we are very gratefull to Dr. Edwards in Olympia and Lafferty’s pharmacy in Ballard that did a great job advising us on what to take in the med kits, and what was not necessary. We had compiled a list of med supplies from several different books, and advanced first aid classes. Dr. Edwards, Mike Lafferty, thank you very much!!!!!!

People are wondering about our splash date. Well, I thought it would be much sooner than later, but there are a couple of things in play here. Obviously my surgery will push things back a bit and the big thing is that there is no room on the pier or the floating slips, so If we do go in the water then we would be on a mooring without shore power, using the dinghy to get to and from the dock. Not a very efficient way to get a lot of work done in a short period of time. We will go on the mooring for a week or so as we get close to our departure date, to start up all the systems and check them out before we depart. When, is anybody’s guess at this point but if “I” were “anybody” and “I” took a stab at it I would say that it is looking like the second week of June.

Now for the Admirals $0.02 worth.
This has been a really strange week. With Dave’s surgery, I did not want him climbing in and out of the boat, or being far from a wait your turn bathroom, in case he had bad reactions to the anesthesia. So, we moved into the neighborhood Marriott (God Bless you Austin!!)
The day of his surgery it was pouring down rain. Gully washer rain! It was so cold in the waiting area, that I went to Walmart and bought a light sweatshirt. It was warmer outside, than inside. They felt sorry for us in the post surgery waiting area, and let us stay a little longer than usual. I then proceeded to make the hotel room like a very cushy hospital room. (King size bed, refrigerator, microwave). I even got to enjoy the swimming pool and hot tub. We had pizza delivered one night and Chinese the next.
We went back to the boat today to get some clean clothes, and decided we needed at least one more night in the hotel. The woman at the front desk said that since we weren’t family we were welcome to come back!!
Dave can’t lift anything over 10 lbs. for 6 weeks. Life should be very interesting for awhile! I guess emptying the pod will be up to me. We’ll see what makes it on to the boat, and what gets deep sixed.
It really is amazing how everything is disappearing into the boat. I still have drawers and cubbies that have nothing in them. Dave and I found some great heavy duty acrylic bath caddies, with handles, that stack up in some of our deep storage bins. 3 deep in my food dry storage bin. That way we can pack way more in the space, and just lift out portions of the food to get to the bottom bins. Way cool!! We just bought 4 more of them, and had to visit 3 different Target stores to find them, but it was worth it.
We will use them in the refrigerator also. Would like to use them in the freezer, but it is just a little narrower, and will not accommodate them. I will have to hunt for some that are just a bit smaller. I am really enjoying shopping down here. There are nautical displays in almost every store, or beach, seashore, etc. I have found some nice additions for my galley. I can’t wait to show off our new home. It will be a lot of fun to have our first guest. Who will that be????
Well, tomorrow we go back to the boat. First on my to do list? Laundry! Then I must put our homeport on the stern of the boat. It looks so blank!! Olympia, WA will look very nice there. Actually, the very first thing will be cooling off the boat. When we went in today, it was over 90 in there. We’ll have to get the fans, and the AC unit going, and get new ice into the refrigerator.

We decided that since we have spent almost a month in Florida now, we would compose a top ten list of:

You know you’re in Florida when:
10 – Alligator is an appetizer OR an entree on the menu
9- Six lane divided arterials have a dedicated u-turn lane every 100 yards
8- 8 out of 10 commercials on TV are for personal injury lawyers
7 – Gas is $ 2.73 a gallon
6 – Pawn shops on every other corner
5 – They have never heard of Block ice
4 – Very few Mormons – the temples are the smallest of all church buildings
3 – The churches are HUGE and there is at least 1 every ½ mile
2 – Women quickly lose interest in their brown leather purses and discard them at the side of the highways – OOPS! Those are dead armadillos!
1 – Signs warning motorists that there are poisonous snakes in the ditches


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Thanks
Nufffornow

Captain Kook and the Admiral