Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Are We In Yet?

This one will be quick.  We have been getting back to our room around 9pm eating dinner, doing puter and paperwork, unwinding then getting up and doing it all over again.  Tomorrow is the big day..........the proverbial sink or swim.  The boat gets launched and back in the water tomorrow.  Still have lots to do and waiting for parts as usual.  Hopefully the hurricane will miss us and we can head out asap.  If not we won't be able to leave until next week after the hurricane passes.  Here are a few pics of what we've been up to since my last post.  This blogging thing is a pain in the rump!

We designed, ordered and installed!
Bow Decals


Extrusion From Hell FINALLY Installed
Prepping Engine For Launching Tomorrow

Night All!

Thursday, October 18, 2012

A Day In The Life

Get up!........Get Up!.........Get Up!
Nope, that's not the wife or the teenagers......even funnier (they don't get out of bed until the very last second)  That was my back, slapping my conscience mind because of the state it's left in each morning after another night in this hotel bed.  Peeking out the curtains to see if it's raining, grab a cup of the brown coloured liquid they call coffee that's a major part of what the hotel calls the grab-n-go complimentary breakfast.  A hot bowl of a gooey flavourless substance called instant oatmeal while watching the weather channel.  The whole while 50 things going through my brain trying to see into the future as to how this day will play out.

Grab the keys, planner, work shoes, teens and cat and head out to the truck (not always in that order)  Head to Bacons Sails & Marine Supplies.  Arrive at Bacons, see Collin, Gavin, Grant and look around for Rob (haven't seen Gary for a few days).  We know all these names as we make our daily trip there almost every day.  Talk to Rob about battery banks, do we want 6 volt or 12 volt?  6 of those or 2 of these, amp hours, recharge cycles, prices, warranties, how long to order, when would they be in and what are the core charges?  The whole time Grant popping in the picture while him and I are discussing LED lighting choices for the mast Tri-Colour, or warm or cool for the anchor light and the port and starboard nav lights, what are the watts?, oh wait, it doesn't say they list them in lumens.  The kids pop in to interject for 3 minutes trying to match up the heavy wall 1 1/2 inch hose pieces they found in the back room, no wait I think they are 1 5/8 inch, no they won't work, that seems pricey for such a short piece, ok, ok, I'll talk to Gavin and see if he can adjust the price.

Hmmm, what else, oh wait we need to check into a replacement for the completely destroyed VHF antenna, most new ones are male ends, ours is a female end............of course it is, it`s much more difficult to than simply grabbing one of those.  Need a new plan, do we cut the cable at the top of the mast and put on a different fitting or do we spend a ridiculous amount of time searching for a replacement that will work?  Hey there's a as new manual bilge pump on the shelf for 115.00, oh wait, we need a rebuild kit for the manual bilge pump, that will be 39.00 for the kit and a new seal for 12.00, ok go ahead and order it and put that one back on the shelf.........wait, wait, you need the washer kit as well to rebuild your old one and that's another 49.00.  Ok ok grab that one of the shelf again and forget ordering the rebuild kits.  Hey! we need to find a new shroud anchor for the flag halyards, 4 new stanchion bases, yes we need those ordered to.  Just put the 4 stanchions in the new storeroom you had built for our stockpile of parts, sails and odds and ends we will be picking up that we don't have room on the boat for at the moment for the flea market look of tools sprawled everywhere.

Well these are 445.00 each and yes you need 2, those are 39.995 and you need 4 of those, oh and 20...count em 20 tubes of 4200 for the aluminum toe rail installation (the aluminum extrusion that costs 1000.00 ( yes 1000.00)) for a 34 foot piece and we need 2 of em to replace the 15 foot piece of broken teak toe rail they want 3000.00 to 4000.00 to repair and replace.  Oh and btw the tubes of 4200 are 15.79 x 20, just for caulking!  Don't forget the 560.00 for the new anchor and the 275.00 to have the sail cleaned from all the bugs that moved in and sold condos in our sail for 4 years while we were gone.  A new outboard @ about 2500.00, bimini replaced for another 900.00, 2000.00 to pay the marina bill and have the boat put back in the water.  THE LIST NEVER ENDS!

Jump back in the truck and head towards the marina, half way there....."oh crap we forgot about the filters"  It's almost 2:30pm and we still have nothing accomplished on the boat yet for today.

This is the 1st half of our daily schedule.  I'd type the rest of the day but now I have a headache and this post would be 15 pages long, oh and it's 11:16pm.  This is just an example of each day since we made it back to Annapolis to rescue our boat and lose our sanity.........I'm stressed just typing it.

"Livin the dream man.................livin the dream!

Hey...That's my truck down there!
Me at the top of the mast about 75 feet off the ground!
It's starting to resemble a boat!
Aluminum extrusion
Engine room

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The First Blog!

Well here it is.  The first blog.  While I've always considered myself pretty tech savvy, blogging or face-cracking (what I call peeps who live on Facebook) has never been on my bucket list.  However this adventure we are on seems to cry out. Blog, blog, blog.  Some-days I'm sure it will give me laughs, others frustration and lastly some days a sense of accomplishment.

I'm sitting here, in a hotel room with every muscle I own and some I didn't know I even had writhing in exhaustion, pounding away on a keyboard on a tiny table by a tiny light.  Mustering up the energy to type this took a lot of convincing and bribery to my sub-conscience mind that it would only take a few minutes and maybe......just maybe someday someone may even read it.

Just to get up to speed quickly we have been in Annapolis now for approximately 4 weeks preparing our sailboat Sparta ready for her first major undertaking.  What an adventure it has proved to be.

Ok that's enough for my first blog.  My sub-conscience is whispering "this will take a lot longer than a few minutes, so catch it up to speed another night".  So for now, it looks like that's what will have to happen.  Maybe a paragraph each blog to slowly explain the whole story would be a much better idea.