Tool of the Day … Prop Anode

January 19, 2018 / FloatsOurBoat / Leave a comment

When metals are placed in a conductive liquid, such as salt water, they create a battery. Current flows between the metals in the process of electrolysis and essentially eats away at one of the metals. The goal is to set things up so that electrolysis eats away at a piece of metal that we don’t really need, and doesn’t destroy the prop or the hull or the motor. So sailboats have small pieces of zinc on the hull and on the prop that are designed to crumble and fall apart over time keeping the important bits intact. One of the last things we did before putting our boat back in the water was to replace these zincs or sacrificial anodes. While we were at it, we greased the prop as well.

See how crumbly the old zincs are?

And a nice clean new one!

Mike loves his grease gun.

Looking good!

January 19, 2018 / FloatsOurBoat / 1 Comment

With a new coat of bottom paint and a new name decal, she is starting to look good and ready for the water!

More than you ever wanted to know about our toilet

January 19, 2018 / FloatsOurBoat / 2 Comments

Ok, remember that decision to install a composting head? Well our Nature’s Head composting toilet finally arrived and is installed. We decided to use coconut coir as the composting material because it is very renewable, and is less likely to harbor bugs than the peat moss alternative. Following advice from Carolyn of The Boat Galley, we choose Planter’s Pride Beats Peat coconut coir. It took almost a week of allowing the coconut to sit in the sun, with one cup of water to achieve a big zip lock bag of dry and crumbly coconut husk. I just kept thinking of pina coladas! Then we filled the composting compartment of the toilet, and we’re good to go!

They say we should never experience odors or other unpleasantness, as long as the liquids and solids are stored separately. But just in case, I am well armed with every possible odor deterrent, insect fighter, and wetness absorber. Take that, nasty smells and gnats!

Of course, installing this toilet sounds simple, but….

We had to address the boat wiring to hook up a ventilation fan
Found a leak in the pump out deck fitting with rotten deck core that needed to be resolved,
Had lots of pipes and holes and sea cocks to fill,
And had to build a platform to support the toilet so that it would actually fit in our teeny, tiny bathroom (head)

Just another example of how one project begets another project and another project and another …..

Tool of the Day… Winch Grease

January 14, 2018January 14, 2018 / FloatsOurBoat / 2 Comments

One of the projects on our task list when we made it to Florida was to service the winches. Or, as our friend Nathan says, “SERVICE THE WINCHES!!!”

When we tried to turn the winches by hand, one was frozen and wouldn’t turn. So we figured we’d do them all at the same time. I had no idea what this entails, but luckily there are manuals, and YouTube videos, and lots of instructions. The tricky part, is even the vocabulary of winches is not strictly regular English.

Do you have any idea what a collet is? Or a pawl? Or gear spindle? Since I didn’t know any of these words, it made interpreting those instructions a little bit tricky. And who knew those winches would turn into such a gigantic pile of small parts?

Mike was in charge of taking the winch apart and cleaning all of the parts. I was responsible for applying oil and grease, and putting them all back together. Eventually …… we actually succeeded in getting them all back together. But not on the first day we tried.

Our first Visitors!

January 13, 2018 / FloatsOurBoat / Leave a comment

It’s been two months since we left Boulder, CO and we’ve definitely had time to miss our friends and family as we attempt to get adjusted to our new lives. In mid-November, we had our strongest supporters show up for a visit – Micki and Nathan!

These guys have believed in us since we first started talking about this crazy sailing dream. And they’ve encouraged us to go for it! Even throwing us a huge boat warming party before we left Colorado.

So maybe we were a little optimistic when we invited them to join us to celebrate putting our boat back in the water and holding a grand renaming ceremony. Huh. Three weeks in St Pete and we still have no fuel tank, no toilet, no dinghy, no…. well everything you need to have a working boat! Good think Micki and Nathan are such good sports! The spent the weekend helping us with boat projects, and may have forced us to get out and experience St Pete a bit – a very welcome break from the boat yard!

Nathan was a trooper, and finished up all of the bilge painting, somehow contorting himself into tiny spaces to make it all work.

And we checked off a big project on our list …. testing the anchor windlass, confirming that all of the anchor chain is in good condition, and marking every 25 feet of chain with a different color, to make it easy to tell how much chain we lay down in an anchorage. Micki helped me let out all 250 feet of chain, markings every segment with colorful plastic zip ties. Zzzzzzz….ippppp that noise always makes us smile!

We had a couple of portlights with torn screens – not acceptable for anchoring in the everglades and other areas where there will be lots of mosquitos! Micki took over the task of measuring, cutting, and shaping the screen frame. Then we cut screen fabric donated by a boatyard neighbor to make perfectly sized screens!

After such significant accomplishments, we deserved a little down time to explore Central Ave in St Pete, including the Emerald Bar and had wonderful charcuterie in the courtyard of our Airbnb.

On the way back to the Tampa airport, we stopped at The Getaway near the Gandy Bridge, and pretended that we were already in the Caribbean with our toes in the sand.