The full boat project list – summer 2023

November 11, 2023November 11, 2023 / FloatsOurBoat / 11 Comments

I haven’t been posting many “Keeping it real – life in the boat yard” blog posts recently. Let’s face it, they are kind of a downer. Plus, you don’t really want to see my sweaty, shiny face beaming at you, covered in yard dirt and anti-foul paint, do you? 🥵 But that doesn’t mean we haven’t been hard at work getting SV Happy ready to hit the high seas this winter! Her previous owners took excellent care of her, but she wasn’t outfitted for life on the hook so we had lots to do there, and just to turn her into a comfortable floating home 🏡

Capt. Mike kicked butt in the spring and got a ton of projects finished between when we moved aboard Happy in late March to when we left Stuart, FL in late April:

Installed 600 watts of solar panels
New 85 pound Mantus anchor
New dinghy davits
Antifoul paint on the hull and prop, with new zincs
Rebuilt the propane system: lines, regulator, solenoid
Applied mast boot tape to address a water leak
Fixed water leak in propane locker
Waterproofed the Bimini and dodger
New led light in the galley
New filters for the drinking water filtration system
Troubleshooting the wind instruments
Fixed drawer latches
New shower head
Started fixing the portlight leaks… More to follow!

We were feeling pretty good about our progress when we left Happy at Brunswick Landing Marina for a couple months this summer. But after our mountain and cycling summer vacation, we had to go back to work – and in crazy Georgia heat and humidity 🔥 We definitely didn’t feel like we were having as much fun as other residents of the marina.

One of our biggest projects was removing all of the portlights (aka boat windows), scraping and cleaning them, and rebedding. In Florida spring thunderstorms, we had water running down the inside of the salon “walls” and collecting inches of water in our drip cups. We decided to repair all the portlights, even the ones without visible leaks, after Capt. Mike installed a light in the galley and water streamed out of the screw holes, implying that some of the leaks were occurring between the hull and the lining. Each portlight took about 8 hours to address – removing with razor blades and pry bars, scraping old caulk and silicon off the stainless, cleaning, rebedding with new caulk, and cleaning the excess that squirted out during the process.

Then the biggest boat project we’ve ever taken on ourselves – installing a high volume water maker / desalinator. A bigger boat means more room for systems and having a virtually unlimited supply of fresh water will be a game changer for our cruising life. But first – we’ve got to get the thing to work! We ordered a Seawater Pro 40 gallons-per-hour system, and it was delivered as a big heavy box of parts and a link to a bunch of You Tube videos. Gulp.

Capt Mike had to figure out where to locate the components of the system (long membranes, water filters, high pressure pump, boost pump, and control panel), and how to connect to the plumbing and electrical systems. At one point, he got frustrated and told me to watch the videos and help him figure out the electrical. I watched each video three times, took pages of notes, and finally announced my findings “They don’t tell you how to connect to the generator and to the boost pump!” Capt. Mike confirmed “That’s exactly my point” 🤦‍♀️ Luckily, they have excellent customer service and tech support and a couple of phone calls gave us enough info to move forward. It took about a month in total to complete this install, with Capt. Mike contorting his body into every tight hold on the boat. We think he’s got it done! Now to anchor in a place with clean ocean water to test it all out!

Here’s the rest of the project list completed between August and November 2023:

Rebed 14 portlights
Install watermaker
New batteries (house battery bank, starter battery, and bow thruster battery)
Rebuilt aft head (toilet) pump, replace aft head sink hose
Added a macerator pump to the aft holding tank
New running rigging, with new eye splices
New dock lines, anchor snubber, anchor bridle, and splices
Install Victron Bluetooth battery monitor
Brought all three sails to a sail loft for inspection and repairs
Recaulked both heads and the galley
Caulked a leak in the forward head fan
Installed lights in the anchor locker, main cabin closet, and fixed existing light switches

We’re exhausted and our bank accounts are a bit lighter, but we’re ready to get out there and start cruising!

Our summer home in Brunswick, Georgia

June 13, 2023June 13, 2023 / FloatsOurBoat / 1 Comment

Our jaunt on the ICW ended a few miles up the Brunswick River at the Brunswick Landing Marina. Our boat will stay here, in a slip in the marina, for all of hurricane season while Mike and I will also do some land travel.

Brunswick is a large, lovely marina with a strong sense of community. Our dock fees here include laundry, the use of shared bikes and gas grills, and access to the club house with its frequent cruiser happy hours. It’s just a short walk to historic downtown Brunswick with some good restaurants, lovely shaded parks, a farmers market, and even a rum distillery.

Dinner with Island Spirit and Painkiller

Ok, enough fun – we still need to prepare for hurricane season and the possibility of severe summer storms. We’ve got an open-close checklist that we’ve used for years, but with a new boat and new systems, we have to review it and modify it. Also, we’re staying in the water this summer instead of hauling out, so we need to prepare a bit differently for that too. Basically, our priorities are to fix as many leaks as possible before we leave the boat unattended, and to reduce the windage and add lots of dock lines so that when heavy storms do occur, there’s little to no damage. Fingers crossed!

Most of our portlights are leaking in heavy rain, so we are gradually removing one at a time, cleaning and scraping off all the old caulk and silicone, and rebedding each one cleanly. We’re getting better at it, but each one still takes about 6 hours from start to finish. It’s a lot of work, AND mess. And it leaves a hole in the boat for hours at a time – not good in spring rain storms! It will be worth it when we can be confident that the rain stays on the outside and we don’t have to worry about water damage to the wood or anything else on the interior.

We took down our jib and staysail, covered all hatches and portlights, flushed the engine and outboard, did oil changes, defrosted the fridge, wiped the entire interior with white vinegar to discourage mold, and fixed a link to the cockpit shower. There’s always plenty of tasks that require Mike to squeeze into a small space!

A few days in the boat yard

May 16, 2023May 16, 2023 / FloatsOurBoat / 2 Comments

As soon as we left Stuart, Florida on our way north, we decided our new boat needed a little love. So we pulled into Cracker Boy Boat Works in Fort Pierce for a few days of hard and dirty work! (In case you hadn’t guessed, this is going to be another “keepin’ it real” blog post)

We were lucky to find a DIY yard where we could do some of the work ourselves to save some money (Thanks, Bill!) but these three days in the yard would still wind up costing about 3.5 “boat units” – yikes! As we approached the haul out slip on Tuesday morning, we radioed the boat yard to let them know we were here. The office manager replied that the crew was almost ready for us – come in slowly with no lines and no fenders…. What? That’s a first for us, and I felt very nervous standing on the bow with nothing to do. But Capt. Mike drove us into the skinny little slip like a champ. And the crew did a great job of communicating and guiding us in with little more than boat hooks. Phew. It’s always a relief to get into a slip without anything going wrong!

The first job we tackled was replacing the CQR anchor with a new 85-pound Mantus we fondly refer to as “The Beast” ⚓ It’s literally the biggest anchor that would fit on our bow and we will sleep much better through wind, tide changes, and heavy current knowing The Beast is keeping us safe. Capt Mike did a ton of research, including trying to decipher our mystery anchor chain (C4 chain is not the same as G4 chain) and to ensure our windlass could handle the heavy load. While we were at it, we marked every 25 feet of chain with colored zip ties so that I know how much rode I am letting out as I drop anchor.

Next, we replaced all the zinc anodes on the hull. Zincs are intended to be “sacrificial” and to corrode more quickly than other important metal boat parts. On Sanitas, we only had two zincs to deal with. On this bigger boat, with more complex systems, we had tons! Including on the bow thruster and related to the refrigerator cooling system. My turn to do tons of research to try to figure out the right shape and size and number to order. (I was mostly right – only two of the zincs I ordered didn’t fit – oops) While we were at it, we scraped barnacles off the prop and bow thruster blades and painted them with epoxy.

Our main priority was to apply new anti-foul paint to the bottom. We knew of one spot where the bottom paint was scraped off, and we wanted to have a nice clean bottom before leaving her in the water in a brackish river without moving for six months. Sounds easy enough, right? But unseasonable Florida thunderstorms were out to get us, cutting our working hours short each day.

In fact, on Wednesday evening we endured one of the strongest storms I’ve ever weathered on a sailboat…. In the boat yard! Our wind instruments aren’t working, so I can’t tell you exactly the max wind speeds, but Capt. Mike estimated sustained winds of 40 to 50kts. The boatyard measured gusts of 68kts. 😲 The worst part was wind came from the side instead of the bow and really shook the entire structure, while heavy rain and hail fell. Mike went out in the worst of the storm to rescue cockpit cushions that were blowing around AND he watched the blades to the bow thruster (which we had taken apart to paint with anti-foul) catch the wind and start somersaulting across the boat yard. Yes, he sprinted after them and made a heroic rescue. That would have been an expensive loss! For my part, I was dressed in my fouly, with my shoes tied, holding a waterproof bag of our phones and wallets, sitting on the floor at the bottom of the companionway, braced in case the boat fell off the stands. Ready to run through the storm if Mike told me to. Luckily, none of that was necessary and we all survived with only some damage to one of the cockpit enclosure panels and an antenna. Phew!

One more challenge to this stint in the boatyard was our lodging. The yard doesn’t allow anyone to live on their boats overnight so I had to find a hotel or Airbnb. The only reasonably priced place I could find was a dumpy motel about 2 miles away on Rt 1. So each morning, and each evening we had a 2-mile walk to get to work – except for the two times Mike hitched us a ride! Luckily, we walked right by a Dunkin each morning – hurray for ‘Merica!

Between the long commute, the storms, and the long list of jobs, it’s a minor miracle that we finished the bottom paint in time. My back still hurts just thinking about it. But we did it! And scrambled to put everything back together before our 9:30 splash appointment on Friday morning. Yes, I did temporarily lose the bolt required to put the bow thruster back together, but that’s another story. Capt. Mike frantically painted the spots where the stands were, just as the lift crew arrived and stood around watching him, smoking their cigarettes and tapping their feet.

But we did it! Back in the water in time to make the 10:00 bridge opening. Huzzah!

Time flies when you’re working on a boat!

April 29, 2023April 29, 2023 / FloatsOurBoat / 10 Comments

I can’t believe it’s been a month since we packed up our lives in Grenada and flew to Florida to meet our new boat. Time sure does fly!

It was much easier clearing our big blue barrels of household goods into the US than it was on the Grenadian side. Less than a week after we arrived in Stuart, Florida we had all of our things and just needed to figure out where to put it all.

The town of Stuart is absolutely lovely, but we didn’t get much opportunity to enjoy it at first – we had too much to do…. We bought a larger, used dinghy from our friend Bill Roy and Capt. Mike spent a few days getting the outboard running smoothly. For his next trick, he installed dinghy davits – arms that allow us to lift the dinghy out of the water at night for safety, and to carry the dinghy out of the water while we are sailing. They turned out great!

Next, we went to work on solar power. Our boat has a nearly-new inboard generator which efficiently sips diesel to generate power. But it takes about two hours in the morning and another hour and a half in the evening to keep the batteries full while running the fridge and lights and keeping things charged. That’s a lot of noise! Not the way we want to live off- grid long term. Mike worked with Alexander to build a stainless steel structure above the shade Bimini and installed three 200-watt solar panels. After pulling loads of cable and installing a Victron MPPT controller, we have power! On a sunny day, our batteries are full by noon.

We have many more complicated systems than we had on simple little Sanitas. Lots to learn! For example, Mike said on this boat we’d be able to drink the water right out of our tanks because we have a built-in filtration system. But because the boat had been sitting unused for a while, the water initially tasted gross. So … we dug into every cupboard, found the water filter system, ordered new filters and voila! Yummy, great tasting water.

Then, the first night we venture out to socialize with other Island Packet owners at a Marina happy hour, we returned home to find a flashing red light illuminating the interior. Apparently our “magic head” (electric toilet) wasn’t so magical at the moment. We’ve got this super cool space age Electro-Scan head that uses electricity to sanitize waste so you can legally eject it overboard… when it works properly. We had to do a lot of investigating and eventually send a few emails back and forth to the extremely patient previous owners before we figured out how to add extra salt water to the system.

After a week of perfect sunny Florida weather, a week of rain set in, and we discovered that our hopefully dry cockpit… wasn’t. With enough rain, the Sunbrella fabric quickly got saturated, and the rain just flowed straight through. So we ordered a gallon of 303 waterproofing and went to work. Did I mention how grateful we are that Amazon delivers to Sunset Bay Marina, and how equally grateful I am that the marina employees didn’t shame me for the number of packages I picked up in one month?

Eventually, we came up for air and started to enjoy the marina lifestyle. And we had friends! Beth, on Stargazer, was moored only two balls away from us. And Adele and Herman, on Willful, made it safely back from Puerto Rico via The Bahamas and joined us in the mooring field. We met new friends, like Ray and Amanda on Elysium who bought their beautiful boat the same week we did. And Matt and Brooklyn on TwoCan who work hard on yachts in Fort Lauderdale all week, and then spend the weekends in Stuart working on their own boat. We even had the chance to finally meet up with Hayden and Radeen on Island Spirit who helped us buy our Island Packet and who serve as the gurus and cheerleaders for the IP community.

And, better yet, we had two different visits from family during our month in Stuart! My parents came to visit just before they started their big road trip back north to New York for the summer and Mike’s Mom was visiting a neighbor on the west coast of Florida so she made the trip over to Stuart to visit us and to see our new boat! It’s so nice to know that our parents can picture this life we are living and our new home! It’s very special.

Tropical Shipping Blues

April 7, 2023April 7, 2023 / FloatsOurBoat / 4 Comments

When we first started talking about buying a new boat, I concocted a little fantasy in my head…. We’d buy a new boat in Grenada and we’d sell Sanitas in Grenada, so we’d put our two boats right next to each other on a dock. We’d simply carry armloads of belongings from one boat to the other, de-cluttering and donating as we went. But when we found our perfect boat in Florida, that little fantasy went “poof”!

So I toyed with the idea of Japanese minimalism. You know, “it’s all just stuff” and “everything is replaceable” and we would just bring what we could fit into checked luggage. Until Capt Mike loaded just a fraction of his tools into a suitcase and immediately exceeded the 50 pound limit. Sure, everything IS replaceable, but how much did I want to spend to buy everything all over again? It takes A LOT of tools to keep a sailboat running and happy.

So we decided to use Tropical Shipping to ship a “Less Than Container” or LCL load from Grenada to Florida. That’s more difficult than it sounds – everybody wants to ship goods from the USA to Grenada, but who wants to ship things BACK to the land of plenty? Apparently we were lucky. We learned that sometimes people wait weeks or even months for enough containers to fill a ship heading west. We called Tropical on a Thursday afternoon and learned there was a ship leaving the next week. Great news! Little did we know how much red tape and bureaucracy we were going to fit into that week….

Step 1: Find a container

Apparently, when you are shipping “less than container” loads, you need to bring your own container. Who knew? And for some reason, the shipping companies don’t sell containers. Neither do the hardware stores, boat supply stores, home goods stores… And although you’ll see shipping barrels by the side of the road all over the islands, often doubling as garbage cans, they never have lids, so they are useless to us. Finally, I turned to the internet and found two big blue plastic shipping barrels (WITH lids) on Facebook marketplace for about $20 each and sent Mike out into Friday night traffic to collect them.

Step 2: Paperwork. A lot of paperwork

I naively believe Tropical Shipping would handle all the paperwork as part of the fee we were paying them. Nope! The customer service agent rattled off a list of forms and a deadline – our shipment would need to be delivered to the port in Grenada by 3:00 Tuesday to make the Thursday departure. Oh, and we’d need to hire a local broker to process our customs forms on the Grenada side. AND we’d need to hire a US broker to process things on that side. The deadline was already feeling tight! After getting a few price quotes, we chose Lund & Pullera and they were excellent! Stacy really helped me through the US Customs process. We hired Alana from Phenomenal Brokerage in Grenada who was also very responsive. But all together I probably spent 10 hours on the laptop tracking down forms and trying to figure out how to complete them. In addition to my part-time job as a boat broker, I’m now working as a customs broker, lol. I need to print new business cards.

Step 3: Pack the barrels

A big blue shipping barrel can swallow up a LOT of stuff. So after Mike packed his tools, we still had a lot of space to pack my favorite pots and pans, snorkel gear, clothes, and even some packaged gluten free food. I admit, we hit the point that everybody gets to eventually when moving house – that point when you just start shoving in whatever you can reach, and you’ll worry about whether you really need it or not on the other side. Then we realized our next problem. A full shipping barrel weighs over 400 pounds. So how were we going to get it out of the boat and to the port?

Step 4: Unpack the barrel you just packed

So we took everything out of the barrel, loaded it all into tote bags and shopping bags, made multiple dinghy trips from the boat to shore, and loaded all that stuff into a rental car.

Step 5: Repeat pack and unpack steps for Barrel #2

By this point, I’m pretty sure we’ve touched everything on the boat, and moved it around, at least five times.

Step 6: Keep calling Tropical until they finally break down and let us deliver the barrels

We worked hard all weekend, and by Monday morning we were ready to deliver our barrels to the port in St George’s. And then we got stuck. We couldn’t do anything until Tropical approved our paperwork, assigned us a container scheduled for that ship, and arranged for someone to meet us at the port. We waited… And waited.. and started calling them about every three hours. Nothing happened on Monday. Or on Tuesday morning. Remember we’d been given a 3pm Tuesday deadline? Finally we called Alana at Phenomenal and she called Tropical and finally we could proceed

We hopped in the rental car and drove into downtown St George’s to the Tropical office to get a car pass for the port. The customer service agent asked Mike for a hardcopy form that Alana processed for us. Uh oh. We couldn’t find it. Must have left it back on the boat. So we hopped back in the car and drove like a bat out of hell back to the dinghy dock, plus a long dinghy ride back to the boat, found the form, and did it all again in reverse. Phew! Got our car pass and headed to the port. It’s now 2:30pm.

Step 7: Deliver the barrels to the port

We donned our close-toed shoes and hi-vis shirts and rushed to the port. A very pleasant young man named Kelwin met us there and showed us to an empty container. Capt Mike set to work. Remember how we couldn’t carry a full barrel? That means we showed up at the port with two empty barrels tied to the roof of the car, with the car itself overflowing with all the stuff we hoped to fit inside them. Kelwin helped me carry bag after bag into the extremely hot shipping container while Mike worked his packing magic. Somehow, miraculously, it all fit. We were asked if Alana had “processed the customs form.” I assumed so, but when we called to find out, she said she’d come down to the port now to do it if, and we weren’t allowed to actually make our official delivery until the US Customs agent filed an ISF form but… the computer was down. We made a bunch of calls and I bit my nails, and eventually it all got done. We closed the lids on the barrels, sealed with a lot of duct tape, tipped Kelwin for his help, and left the port around 4:15. I guess we were on-time when you take into account the concept of “Island Time” We went home and as Mike was unpacking his bag, out fell the paperwork that we drove all the way back to the boat to collect. No one had asked for it again. And even as I am writing this week’s later from the US, no one has ever asked for it. Sheesh.