Initial, Official Training for the First Mate

In one of Sam's posts, he mentioned making preparations for ourselves.  Well, June was an extremely busy month for me as I prepared for different changes in my life.  First, we closed on our home June 7th.  Saying good-bye after five short years was bitter sweet.  I remember seeing it for the first time, falling in love with it, and hoping to spend the rest of our lives there.  A young couple bought the house and got a puppy.  They love the house and are excited to spend many years there.

Second, my last day of teaching was June 10th.  After 9 years teaching math in Minnetonka and 14 years total, I am looking forward to a little time off to sail and reevaluate what I'd like to do after cruising.  I will miss my coworkers and students, but looking for the very needed break.

Third, as I ended two chapters in our life, I prepared for our next journey by completing a week long sailing course in the San Juan Islands.  I participated in the ASA 101, 103, and 104 through San Juan Sailing out of Bellingham, WA.  I spent the week between school ending and the start of my sailing classes studying the material from the three course books.  By the time I read through my third book, I felt somewhat prepared to take the first written exam aboard our sailboat.  Throughout the week, I had three written tests and practical skills tests to complete onboard. I flew into Portland PDX airport Friday afternoon where my friend April Strong picked me up and drove north to Bellingham WA.  We boarded SV Esprit de Mar (the owner's Jeanneau 45) Saturday just after having lunch with Captain Anne and the four of us (Jessica, Callie, April, and I).

Esprit de Mar in Friday Harbor

We were informed that we would be taking our first written at lunch, but the weather was not ideal, so we focussed on getting off the dock and motoring/sailing out for our first night.  We stayed at Blind Bay on Shaw Island.  We finally took the first test on Sunday morning. I scored a 95/100 and was pleased.  April and I had studied in bed the night before.  Captain Ann has been an instructor with San Juan Sailing for almost 5 years now and has great materials and successful routines she uses every time she takes out a new group.  I loved the way she broke up the duties on board: The Skipper who was in charge of getting us safely from point A to B, The Navigator who was responsible for weather briefing and navigational course (dead reckoning) for the day, The Mechanic who was in charge of checking the systems on board along with assisting the deckhand, and The Deckhand who was responsible for mooring/anchoring and bumpers and lines along with dish duty.  We rotated through the roles each day so we became comfortable with all positions on a sailing vessel.  I hope to put a few of these systems into place on Windbird. Today we spent the majority of our time sailing and learning the different points of sail along with knowing when to ease and trim the sails.  If I recall correctly, we were also in search of whales throughout the day. :)

Sunday night we anchored at Garrison Bay on San Juan Island (one of our favorite anchorages).  We arrived early enough to take the dingy to shore and did some walking at English Camp.  A family of deer lived on the island and didn't seem to be people shy. 

Garden at English Camp

Esprit de Mar after Sunset - Garrison Bay

Monday morning, we had breakfast and took our second written test (I scored 97/100).  We had to make sure we left to get out before low tide.  We motored over to Roche Harbor where we practiced figure eights to get the feel of the motor.  We also practiced stopping alongside a buoy.  We had time to take showers before a quick sail to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island where we spent the Summer Solstice.  

Friday Harbor

Full Moon during Summer Solstice

Tuesday morning the winds were somewhat strong in the harbor.  The wind was blowing us into the dock, so it was a little stressful to motor off.  I was the skipper for the day, so that was my job, which was quite stressful for me, but Captain Anne was there to guide me and step in if she needed to.  We agreed to practice stopping along side the dock where the wind was blowing us off.  I'm sure it appeared to others that we didn't know what we were doing, but we were practicing.  Our boat was magnificent and every time we came into port, people watched.  Many would want to jump in to help 5 women, but we had to mention that we were a student boat and had it under control.  We had mapped out a location for where we wanted to spend the night, but the winds and currents were strong enough that we ended up picking a different location.  We sailed to and moored in Shallow Bay on Sucia Island.  It was a peaceful place.  We took the dingy into shore where we had a quick hike to the other side of the island.  We spoke to an older couple who had kayaked in during low tide.  Jessica and Callie went for a jog and walk respectively while the rest of us went back to the boat to prepare dinner.  April and I drove back in to pick up the girls about an hour later.  

The kayakers relaxing and enjoying the view

 April and I

 Madrone Tree - Native to the area

Upon waking Wednesday morning, we took our final written exam.  I was most nervous about his one because I felt the least prepared; the test consisted of systems and more rules and regulations.  I ended up scoring 93/100.  I was very pleased with all three scores but felt like I needed more practice with the skills portion of the tests.  We left Shallow Bay headed for Rosario on Orcas Island.  We had a nice morning sail, heaved to for lunch, sailed a little more before practicing man overboard and then arrived in Rosario in time to see Christopher Peacock played piano and organ at The Mansion.  After the concert, April and I took showers and Jessica and Callie went for a hike.  Captain Anne made spaghetti, her special sauce, and garlic bread for dinner, which we ate late because the girls had taken a wrong on their way back to the boat.  It was another late night while we planned our sail for Thursday.

For our final FULL day of sailing we had steady winds and currents.  Captain Anne asked us not to lean on her for advice because she wanted us making decisions on our own.  We teamed up and took turns sailing as if we were a two person crew.  I was hoping that I'd become more comfortable at the helm during this course, but realized it will take me much longer than these six days.  I also realized that I really like easing and trimming the sails.  On our way over to Inati on Lummi Island, we stopped at Vendovi (Captain Anne's secret stop) to hike and meet the couple who live on and manage the island.

 We saw slugs and this beautiful snail

Esprit de Mar with Lummi in the background

It was a quick sail over to Inati where we moored and stern tied.  April and I were acting deckmates so were responsible for rowing to shore and tying down the stern.  By this point we docked two nights, moored two nights, and anchored two nights using a different anchoring system each night.  

Friday morning was sunny and windy.  We had a beautiful sail back to Bellingham with winds up to 25 Knots at times.  We reefed before raising the anchor, so we were ready for the winds.  Once arriving back to base, we needed to refuel, empty the holding tanks, and fill the water tanks  Jessica docked us at the dump dock where the wind was blowing us off the dock, Callie docked us at the fuel dock, and I drove us to the dock.  We had to be off the boat by noon.  All in all, we had a great time and I'm glad that I took the course.  I have plenty more to learn, but it will be aboard our boat Windbird.  Next month Sam and I will be attending some classes at Cruisers University in Annapolis.  I'm excited to learn so much more.  I've been spending time joining Facebook groups like Women Who Sail and Cooking on a Boat to help me be more prepared before I move aboard by November 1st.

 

Final sail back to Bellingham Bay. 

Cruising on Two Wheels

The last few days Dawn and I took a short break from thinking about boat stuff to get our motorcycles out of storage and take them for a 2-day romp through the hill country of Southeastern Minnesota and Western Wisconsin. Our adventures over our 15 years together have taken many forms, and motorcycling has been a major one since 2008. That was the year I bought my 1985 BMW K100RS in Aspen, Colorado, largely because Dawn could comfortably ride on the back (unlike my earlier Yamaha FZ600). In 2009-2010, I made a 14,680 mile trip around the circumference of the Lower 48 states in multiple stages, and Dawn rode on the back for some 5000-odd miles of it and really enjoyed it. Later in 2010, my good friend Brad Phillips and I were planning a trip to Alaska and back for summer 2011, and Dawn gave her permission but wanted to come along. "Ah, gee, honey - two people and all our stuff for a month on one bike would be kinda tough" - to which she suggested she get her motorcycle license and her own bike! Which is exactly what she proceeded to do. We bought her 2005 Yamaha FZ6 in Portland, OR (where the Alaska trip was departing from), and when we took off in June 2011 she had all of six days of street riding experience under her belt thanks to a run down the West Coast to Napa and back we did over her Spring Break that year. Dawn did great on the 6500+ miles of the Alaska ride and has been an avid rider since - these days, she puts more miles per year on her Yamaha than I do on the BMW.

When we embarked on the "sell everything and go sailing" plan, "everything" originally included the motorbikes. But then we decided we would come back to MN and live with family during the first hurricane season down south (when the boat will live on land), and it made sense to keep the bikes since we'll be back north during prime riding season. For now we're keeping them in a nearby storage unit, and this fall they'll go to Dawn's brother's garage for the winter. Sadly, we haven't got much use out of them this year - there's been precious little time between Delta keeping me busy flying, boat purchase and now refit trips, etc. When we were getting our saddlebags and camping equipment out of the mini-storage space in the basement of our apartment building, Dawn somewhat reproachfully said "You know, you get really gung-ho for one hobby, go full out for a year or two, and then move onto the next big thing." Ouch! She's not exactly wrong. I do have a pretty wide variety of hobbies & interests. It's not like I lost interest in motorcycling, but my passions for flying small planes and sailing have both blossomed over the last few years, and we continued to travel fairly extensively during that time as well. There's only so many days in the year, and well, some of those we have to work. Now that we've committed to cruising nearly-full-time for several seasons, pretty much everything else is getting shoved aside. That's not a bad thing. This is a big undertaking and it deserves our full attention. But I'm going to have to be a lot more single-minded and not "move onto the next big thing."

I've put nearly 50,000 miles on the BMW since I bought it (it's close to turning over 100k miles - these old BMWs are known for running pretty much forever), and so it didn't take long to get back into the groove once we got back out on the road. Our little two-day, 450-mile trip reminded me just how much I enjoy motorcycling once I actually get out and do it. But it occurred to me last night, while we sat in a small-town Wisconsin tavern eating dinner and sipping New Glarus Spotted Cow ales, that my enjoyment of motorcycling, flying small planes, international travel, and sailing/cruising are all different sides of the same (apparently 4-sided) coin. They're all adventurous ways to get out and explore the most beautiful corners of our diverse, fascinating world and meet a wide variety of interesting people while doing so. Cruising will allow us to do this in a much more in-depth and unhurried fashion than we're used to, and that prospect has me really excited.

We're Hers

I was originally going to title this post "She's Ours," but I think the opposite is just as true if not moreso. Either way, Dawn and I and Windbird have officially tied the knot! Earlier this week the Handleys were able to get the USCG Satisfaction of Mortgage form from their bank, which was the last remaining obstacle; our bank released the funds on Thursday, we overnighted the check to Triton Yacht Sales, and as of yesterday we are Windbird's official owners. It was an event that mostly passed without fanfare; Dawn packed for a weekend trip to visit high school girlfriends and I packed for my next work trip that reported at 1am this morning, and in between we refined our refit schedule and cruising budget. It didn't really quite hit me until I read Judy Handley's blog post last night, The End of a Chapter. I think the sale of Windbird is almost a bigger deal to the Handleys than it is to us because she took them around the world and has been their home for the last 13 years; they know exactly what they're giving up, while we don't know yet exactly what we're gaining. I sure am excited to find out, though.

Our next trip to the boat will be August 21st-25th. The Handleys are hoping to fly down to Myrtle Beach for 2-3 days to brief us more extensively on boat systems and go sailing with us, but it really depends on Mark's cancer treatment and how he's feeling, both of which have been quite in flux lately. Best case scenario, we'll spend two days exploring the Waccamaw River and Georgetown SC before sailing outside back to Little River the third day - but if the Handleys can't do this, we'll do it ourselves sometime in September. We expect to have the sails back on the boat August 22nd. I don't know if I mentioned this the other day, but the North Sails loft that inspected Windbird's sails declared the primary mainsail "dead on arrival" due to UV degradation, which I suspected might be the case. The good news is that Windbird came with a backup Neil Pryde mainsail that's still in decent shape, so we're having it reconditioned and will use it as our primary mainsail for the time being. In October or November we will have a new North Sails mainsail made and that will become our primary and the Neil Pryde will be our backup. The new mainsail will be a $4800 expenditure but should drastically improve Windbird's sailing performance. We're also looking at having a new stackpack made at the same time, which will run around $1600.

We'll continue to do the smaller, putzier bits of the refit in September, but in October comes the major yard work: replacing the chainplates, bow stem, gooseneck, and standing rigging, repairing the skeg, and repainting the bottom. We were thinking of doing this at Zimmerman Marine in Southport NC but they recently lost their rigger and were going to send us up the ICW to their other yard in Mathews, VA; now I'm thinking we'll do it at Charleston City Boatyard in Charleston, SC. We'll then have the new enclosure made in November or December, likely by Sunset Canvas in Little River. In the meantime I'll fit Windbird with an AIS transponder, a PC-based chartplotter system, and possibly a new radar.

Right now I'm frankly doubtful that all this will proceed on schedule and we'll be ready to take off for the Caribbean come January or February, and so we've been considering an alternate plan: just get enough done to take a 2-3 month shakedown cruise in the Abacos and Exumas in Feb-Apr, come back to the States to finish up the refit next summer, and then take off for real in the fall of November 2017. This was, after all, our original timeline. But we'll see. We don't want to launch into the rather remote southern Bahamas before we and the boat are ready, but at the same time are aware that a lot of boats languish on the dock way too long while the owners embark on the "ultimate refit." The main idea here is to make sure the sails, rigging and engine are up for the long windward slog to the Greater Antilles while addressing a few of the other things that have worn out during Windbird's epic trip around the globe and the five years since. And yes, we also need to get in some trips up and down the Carolina coast to better familiarize ourselves with Windbird's systems and maintenance.

One big part of our plan fell into place yesterday when I found out I'll be converted to an Atlanta base on October 1st. We recently had a vacancy bid in which I put in for and was awarded the transfer, but I wasn't sure when it would be effective. This is perfect as we'll be moving down to the boat permanently in late October. Piece by piece, it's all coming together.

A Quick Tour

Just before leaving Windbird last week I thought to grab some video of a quick tour of the boat. The sails are off, battens laying on deck, enclosure closed and cushions drying due to a thunderstorm that just passed, etc, but it'll give a good idea of the layout and appearance.

A Chance Encounter?

I know I've mentioned it before here, but if you're interested in the previous adventures of Windbird under her present/soon-former owners Mark & Judy Handley, you should check out The Voyage of Windbird blog. Judy (and very occasionally Mark) posted almost every single night, sending logs via ham radio with pactor modem when they were offshore. The first six years are a well-written look at daily life as a circumnavigator; the five years since make for more sobering reading as Mark was diagnosed with colon cancer soon after their return, but through the ups and downs of his fight they find joy in their grandkids and extended family, each other, and Windbird herself. I've come to really admire the Handleys through their blog, our email and phone conversations, and getting to know their boat. Be forewarned, though: don't dive into the blog without a good week or two set aside. It's long. I started reading right around the time we started getting serious about Windbird in late May, and still haven't completely finished.

In fact I just recently read Judy's Year 10 account of their cruise through the Bahamas, in Feb & March 2015. This was really interesting because Dawn and I flew our Piper Pacer through the Bahamas in late March 2015, and in fact it turns out we crossed paths with Windbird in a most serendipitous way. On Sunday, March 29th, Windbird was cruising from Warderick Wells to Hawksbill Cay in the Exuma Cays Land & Sea Park. Judy wrote:

We skipped Hawksbill Cay on our way south, so we were elated that we got the opportunity to stop here today. It is billed as the most beautiful island in the Exumas. I’m not sure I totally agree with that, but it does have an interesting coastline. It has outcroppings of what I call the ‘prickly’ limestone (jagged and sharp) as well as layered limestone that that is much smoother. We are moored right in front of the entrance to a creek that goes inland a bit and there are beautiful white sand beaches. There are lots of snorkeling spots here, but by the time we got here, it was well after low tide so we chose not to snorkel. Instead, we picked up Lee and Lynda in our dinghy and headed about a mile north to a little beach with a path to some old Loyalist ruins.

Meanwhile, my brother Steve and I had landed in Nassau to pick up Dawn, who was flying in from Minneapolis on Delta. We hopped over to Norman's Cay on the northern end of the Exuma to meet up with friends who were flying a second airplane...

Then we took off together and flew formation for 32 stunning miles of the Exuma Islands chain: the turquoise of the Grand Bahama Bank to the west, bleached cays and scrub-covered islets, shallow lagoons, narrow cuts, pristine reefs, empty sugar-sand beaches, and the deep dark blue of the Atlantic to the east.

During this flight we flew over the Exuma Land and Sea Park including Hawksbill Cay, right around the time that Mark and Judy were exploring the Loyalist ruins while Windbird bobbed at anchor. Dawn and I loved the almost surreal beauty of the Exumas and couldn't believe we were flying over it in our own airplane, but I also noticed all the boats negotiating the mazelike chain and thought "what I wouldn't give for a sailboat and a month or two of free time to explore around here!" As it turned out, this flight and our other explorations of the Bahamas that week would be one of the catalysts for our decision later in 2015 to sell everything and go cruising sooner rather than later. And as it turns out, we were flying over our future boat at the time!

Note: I also wrote an article about our March 2015 flying/sailing trip for Flying Magazine. You can read the online version here.

Windbird Workweek

I was intending to post every night this week about individual boat projects but that didn't happen. The nights went late and we got up early each morning to beat the heat, which didn't leave much time for blogging. Dawn flew home today as she could only find puppy care for 4 days, and I'll head home tomorrow since I have a five-day trip starting Saturday afternoon. We'll be back to Myrtle Beach on August 22nd-25th and will resume boat projects then and maybe even get off the dock for a night or two.

During my last trip for work, I made up a list of projects to be accomplished this week. It was ambitious & I knew it; I figured aiming high would motivate me to get as much as possible accomplished. It turns out I'd need that motivation, because it was insanely hot: multiple days of 95+ in blazing sunshine. John Schwab, Windbird's broker, was on vacation and offered Dawn and I the use of his condo in the marina, but we ended up sleeping on the boat all six nights. The nights were cool enough to make it comfortable with the on-board 12V fans plus a borrowed box fan. As for the days, well, we adjusted pretty quickly after I moved kinda slowly the first few days.

As expected, we didn't get everything done that I wanted to get done, but we did do a lot:

Move Aboard

Dawn's car was still full of boxes from our house, full of my tools and books and other stuff we thought we'd want on the boat. I did this on Saturday after I got in and spent two hours on the phone to Mark Handley, Windbird's current owner, talking systems and maintenance. It took a while to organize and find homes for everything, and then we received five boxes of goodies from the Handleys that their friends had mistakenly removed from the boat in April. It all made a circuitous journey to a local storage unit, over to Charlotte, up to Cape Cod, and back down to Little River. Most of it was charts, guidebooks, and reference material, plus Snuba gear (think scuba with a hose from a compressor that stays on the boat - useful for scraping the bottom or clearing a fouled prop), rubber-bottom dishes, and a sextant. I'm told another box is headed this way. Fortunately Windbird has a lot of storage space so we still have room to move our clothes, galleyware, additional books, and personal items aboard in November - plus pack the food and spares needed for extended cruising.

Inventory

This one sounds simple enough but took the longest of all the jobs: we started Tuesday night and didn't finish until Thursday afternoon. Windbird came with a lot of equipment, spare parts, cleaning supplies, varnishing & painting supplies, various chemicals, etc. It was too stultifying to catalogue everything at once so we broke the boat into thirds which made it more manageable (although we could have saved ourselves a few trips to West Marine & Home Depot if we had done it all straightaway). The current admiral, Judy, had done a nice job of mapping and listing all the various storage compartments, which made it easy to list our inventory in a searchable Excel spreadsheet totaling some 20 pages - so far.

Fix Leaky Aft Head: 

see last post.

Flush & Fill Freshwater Tanks:

This was supposed to be my first project but I arrived at the boat to find that sometime in the recent past, the freshwater pump assembly had fallen clean off the engine room wall and it now gushed water into the bilge when I turned it on!

I waited a few days until I bought a good cordless drill (see below), thought about how to go about it in the meantime, bought a few 1x4s and stainless steel fasteners, and then tackled the project Wednesday morning. It wasn't a hard project persay, it was just in an inconvenient location in the engine room that required awkward maneuvering, and I ended up tweaking my back a bit. But with a working freshwater pump we were able to drain both tanks (150 gal total), remove the top access panels, scrub as much as the baffles would allow, spray a hose around to reach the rest, partially fill the tanks, drain them again, and then refill. The water now smells much better and tastes good too through the Seagull filter system.

The story doesn't quite end there: the "off" side of the circuit breaker for the freshwater system was sticking, and then Dawn accidentally broke it trying to turn it off. So I'll have to manually disconnect the system before I leave the boat tomorrow and then try to find a vintage white Stolz circuit breaker.

Buy Tools

I swear, it seemed like half our time was taken up making runs to Home Depot, Harbor Freight, and West Marine. I have a pretty good set of automotive tools but am lacking in compact power tools and specialized boat tools, as well as any sort of organization system. I had a workbench at home and kept my tools on and under that, and so I never bought a good toolbox. I brought a fishing tackle box and a cloth Army toolkit from the Pacer, which were actually just the right size to fit my plumbing and electrical tools respectively. I ended up buying a really nice, heavy-duty cloth Husky tool bag from Home Depot; it's small enough to lug around the boat without bashing into everything, but has a bajillion pockets to nicely organize my general tools.

Other things I needed were an angle grinder (purchased at Harbor Freight), a wet/dry shop vac (got a very compact bucket-top system at Home Depot), and above all a good portable battery-powered drill. Our cordless drill at home was always pretty crappy and finally died in the last year. My corded drill is a hardcore drywall machine that's complete overkill for any job requiring finesse. I ended up selecting a Milwaukee M18 (18v) driver-drill and impact driver set with two lithium batteries and a charger. I've heard great things about the M18 system, and am so far really impressed. The tools are light and powerful, battery life seems very good, and the batteries charge in like 20 minutes. Next on the wishlist: a multitool. A Fein would be nice but it's quite expensive, and now that I have the M18 system I might as well go with the Milwaukee version.

Commission Dinghy

We purchased Windbird with "Little Bird," the Handley's West Marine RIB dinghy, and "Ethel," their Yamaha Enduro 2-stroke 15hp outboard (named in honor of Judy's centenarian Aunt in hopes of similar longevity). The outboard was rebuilt in Florida last year but hadn't been run since February, so I feared it would need some coaxing to get going. Well, first we had to get it off Windbird, and there was a padlock preventing us from doing so! We couldn't find the key aboard, John didn't know where it was, and the Handleys thought they might have it but weren't sure (going by Judy's blog, it seems the search put her in a divesting mood!). In the end Dawn just cut the lock off with a bolt cutters and we bought a replacement padlock. We then used the dinghy davits to lower the dinghy - whoops, plug's out, back up she goes! Plug in, back down, and then used the very handy outboard crane to swing and lower the outboard oh-so-carefully onto Little Bird's stern. Three pumps on the fuel bulb, a little choke, and Ethel roared to life on the third pull! She ran a bit rough at first but after warmup a couple of "hole shots" demonstrating that famous 2-stroke torque got her running smoothly. Last night we took the dink to dinner at the Officer's Club on the other side of the harbor (though we easily could have walked in five minutes) and took a short cruise on the Intracoastal Waterway afterwards.

Replace EPIRB

Actually dismounting the old one and putting our new ACR GlobalFix V4 in its place took five minutes; it took longer to register the new one on the NOAA website (particularly to find Windbird's MMSI number). EPIRBs (Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacons) have come wayyy down in price in the last few years: this one was $399 from Defender, and it's a pretty nice one with integrated GPS and a user-replaceable 10-year battery. Just replacing the expired battery on the old one would have cost as much. 

Get Estimate for Dodger/Bimini Canvas Replacement

We really like the Dodger/Bimini/Enclosure on Windbird but UV has taken its toll on the fabric (actually moreso on the thread which has had to be restitched multiple times, taking a toll on the fabric). So from the start we were planning on having a replacement made. There's a local canvas guy who comes highly recommended (he also did some work for Mark & Judy, which they thought was good); he came out to look at the enclosure Thursday, and if his estimate isn't outrageous we'll likely go with him. But there are also canvas shops in Georgetown and Southport that are worth checking into; for them we took a series of photos and measurements of the existing enclosure.

Remove Sails and Get Inspected/Repaired 

The sails on Windbird date to before the Handleys' circumnavigation; they have a lot of miles on them, but seemed salvageable during the survey. Tuesday morning, we got up very early to take advantage of a still morning and unbend the sails. This was a bit intimidating as I'd never done so on such a big boat with big, heavy sails, but it actually went quite smoothly. We had all the sails off, folded and bagged within a couple hours and then took a field trip up to the North Sails loft in Carolina Beach. We also brought two spare sails that had been living in Windbird's vberth, a mainsail and a staysail.

Today Rodney Allison of North Sails emailed to report that the mainsail is "dead on arrival" due to severe UV degradation, but the staysail and genoa are both repairable and in reasonable condition. Better yet, both sails that were in storage are quite good. So I think our plan is to have repairs made to both staysail and genoa, then use the spare staysail and keep the current staysail as a spare, and use the spare mainsail for the time being and have a new mainsail made before we go cruising. That's not cheap but will greatly improve Windbird's upwind capability.

In addition, we're looking at replacing the stackpack since we're getting new canvas for the enclosure and its zipper seam is currently torn; but we may choose to hold off and just get this one repaired, since Rodney thought it was saveable and we're otherwise going to be laying out a lot of extra money for a mainsail. 

Clean Teak Deck

As I've written before, Windbird's teak deck has been cared for but is nonetheless quite old and there's a good chance we'll eventually have to replace it. Thus, it behooves us to exercise great care in our handling of it. If you want an aged teak deck to look beautifully new, it just takes a whole lot of elbow grease, lots of sanding pads, and a good chunk of wood off the top. Not an option for us. I don't mind the silvered look, but six months of sitting had turned Windbird's decks dirtily ugly. So we attacked that Thursday morning with two soft-bristle brushes and a mild mix of cold water and Dawn detergent. Apparently plain old seawater is even better for cleaning but the dirty brackish water of Colquina Harbor is definately NOT suited to cleaning! We were careful to use plenty of water, brush with the grain, and make multiple light passes instead of brushing heavily, and the results were pretty spectacular at the time. After drying out, the deck is still a lot nicer than it was but is nevertheless mottled in spots. We'll try another cleaning next time we're at the boat, and then look at using a mild commercial teak cleaner.

Wash & Wax Hull

Windbird's topsides were last painted in 2009, in Thailand, using Awlgrip. This requires the use of specialized cleaning (AwlWash) and waxing (AwlCare) products. We bought West Marine's last bottle of Awlcare yesterday before finding it today in Windbird's aft head. I drove Dawn to the airport this afternoon, met the local canvas guy at Windbird afterwards, and then chilled out in the cockpit drinking a beer and taking a short nap while waiting for the heat to die down a touch. Then I spent two hours rinsing, washing, and drying the topsides, reaching from the dock where feasible and working from the dinghy at the bow, stern, and non-dock side. After a long hot day (7:30am-8:30pm) of cleaning inside and out, I was happy to be done even though I didn't get to the waxing. Windbird already looks a lot better, but I'll try to get a coat of AwlCare on her in the morning.



Service Engine

I was fully intending to change engine & transmission oil & filter, drain the Racor housing and replace primary & secondary fuel filters, change "fan" belts (there's no fan, they run pumps & alternators), top off the starting battery with distilled water, &etc, but didn't get around to it partially because I hadn't found the spare filters yet. I found out tonight that there aren't any on the boat (the folks who unpacked the Handley's stuff when they had to go to MA requisitioned the filters for their Island Packet, which is in the slip next door), so I'll run to West Marine in the morning after the boat waxing and what I don't get done before I fly out, I'll do when I arrive next time. 

 There were several other small projects planned & unplanned along the way, but that's pretty well the gist of it. Besides the engine the uncompleted items include cleaning stainless steel & bronze on deck, diagramming systems, cleaning electrical systems, replacing a raw water strainer for the washdown pump, lubing a zerk fitting on the pillow block, and servicing the windlass. We'll get to those next time - hopefully some of them while tucked away in a quiet anchorage off the dock.

Head Honcho

I'll be honest: when I first wrote up a conditional acceptance after the survey, I initially included the leaky aft head among the deficiencies to be corrected by the owners before closing. All the others were safety-related items; this one was simply because I didn't want to be the head to be my very first project as a boat owner. But then I decided that I was being a wuss: working on the head is an inescapable albeit less-than-glamorous part of cruising, and I'd best make peace with it sooner rather than later. So I deleted the head from my "punch list," and I tackled it soon after arriving in Myrtle Beach this Saturday for a week of boatwork.

I started my "headwork" in Nigel Calder's "Boatowner's Mechanical & Electrical Manual," proceeded to the Jabsco website, and from there watched a YouTube video about rebuilding my specific model of toilet. Both of the heads on Windbird are dirt-simple Jabsco 29090 manual pump toilets; there are only a few parts that can fail, mostly seals that get leaky with age or valves that get fouled with, er, "debris." Fortunately in this case it was only a leaky top piston pump seal, meaning I didn't have to dig too far into the "dirtier" parts of the head. I did have to extract the piston that moves everything along to change the seal assembly, but overall the job was pretty tame and only took five minutes once I got down to it.



I moved a carload of stuff onto the boat Saturday and spent most of Sunday organizing and doing pidly jobs, and then Dawn flew in on Monday and we've been hard at work since. Shortly after arriving I discovered that the freshwater pump assembly had quite mysteriously fallen off the engine room wall (it's attached with four screws). One of my first planned projects was to flush and clean the freshwater tanks but I wasn't going to pump out 150 gallons using the galley foot pump! I've done some thinking about how to better secure the freshwater pump and will tackle that tomorrow morning.

I'll do a couple other posts about miscellaneous boat projects but have to say I've rather enjoyed putzing around our "almost ours" boat thus far. Windbird is already feeling a lot more familiar and homelike. I'm looking forward to getting her off the dock and into a breezy anchorage for the first time...I really like the marina we're in, but South Carolina in the summertime without AC is not an ideal place to be stuck in a marina!