Wow, three years without a post. I guess that’s pretty normal for these sorts of blogs.

The good news is that we’ve been cruising, racing and updating the boat. We’ve gotten pretty good and being “big-boat” owners I think, and our world cruise is less than 12 months away now.

We organized all the hundreds of things we want to (and had to) get done using posti-it notes at first and then we moved to an on-line Jira board.

 

 

The Jira board has labels for different things, like “DIY” or “Vendor required” or “Buy”, and we’re capturing things for the boat and the home. It’s been incredibly useful to prioritize, categorize and estimate the work. Amazingly, we’re in the home stretch. Without making a comprehensive list, these are all the things I can think of, from the top of my head:

• Rudder re-fit (the rudder was completely removed and all the bearings, seals and fittings were refreshed).

• Cutlass bearing! While the rudder was out, we did the cutlass bearing and it turned out our shaft was bent (probably from an anchoring incident we had) so we replaced that too.

• New rigging! After taking Brion Toss’ awesome rigging seminar, we were lucky enough to get to work with Brion to completely re-imagine the standing rigging with him, this included lots of nifty improvements and upgrades (Up-sized the V1s; downsized the backstay; upgraded all the tangs and fittings; replaced the inner forestay from wirestay to dynemma; upgraded the majority of the mast rivets to fasteners; upgraded all the mast lights to LED; Upgraded the radar reflector to an active type; added mast steps at the top; new VHF antenna; new windex; fixed the wind instrument; ran new mousing line; and probably a much more stuff that I’m forgetting).

• New anchor (finally convinced to drop the CQR and move to a modern anchor, we got a good deal on a bright shiny new Ultra which has been incredible).
• New Radar (“4th gen” radar with lower power draw and all the fancy features).
• Re-faired the keel! The boat had developed a smile from what looks like a field fix one of the previous owners had made. It looks like they’d hit something had filled the area with putty that lasted a while. But we re-did it the right way.

• Upgraded the electrical system to be based on a power bus system instead of everything wired directly to the battery (ICK!)

• Upgraded batteries to firefly! Oh they’re so awesome.

• New watermaker! And we replaced the intake of the watermaker so that jellyfish are less likely to get in (ask me how we found that out).
• New fridge compressor
• New Propane tanks
• New wire backstay antenna (we removed the backstay insulators during the refit)
• Serviced the heat exchanger
• Re-built all the diesel fuel injectors
• Replaced all the questionable through-hulls
• Built a proper, two-part preventer based on the Port Townsend Rigging recommendations
• Built a high-line jack-line system
• Replaced the stern lifelines with stainless steel tubes to house our new solar panels; built new lifelines for the mid-section
• Installed a boarding ladder amid-ship for dinghy and rescue operations
• Made all new carpet for the boat
• Made all new curtains
• Made all new cushion covers
• New mattress for our quarters (cushy!)
• New shower setup with water saver
• Re-conditioned the holding-tank
• Hardwired an electronic barometer
• Installed two fans
• Installed a radiofax system using a lower power computer (Udoo)
• Made all new standing rigging, each with a spliced eye and reeving hole on the bitter end. New Shackles; All of this replacing all of the wire-to-rope that we had (after we made sure the sheeves were appropriate for this change)
• Installed our Monitor windvane and learned how to use it

I’m forgetting a bunch of stuff (since I’m not looking it up on Jira). But all of this, on-top of all the regular maintenance, oil changes, fuel filter changes, watermaker maintenance, winch maintenance, teak maintenance, waxing and buffing and oh, so much more maintenance. All of it fun and exciting, and things that we get so much better at. I can do a regular oil change in about an hour and a half now (that includes taking all the used oil to recycling; so I’m pretty proud of that).

Well, it’s been a busy few years. So, no, not dormant, just active on the boat. The next phase is right around the corner. We are just down to a handful of smaller projects, our liferaft comes next month as do our new solar panels. We just need to replace a few more little things (water tank level sender) and just keep cruising and practicing.

We are looking forward to joining the CoHoHo group in early 2020!