We've been kept busy over the past few weeks doing a variety of maintenance tasks and installing a few things. The exterior teak trim's finish was worn and peeling, so I sanded it down and repainted it with several coats of Cetol, a teak treatment which doesn't look quite as nice as traditional varnish, but lasts a lot longer and requires much less maintenance. This wasn't too big a job, since Calibers have little exterior teak; most boats have at least some, and many have quite a lot. (Our neighbor's Valiant is an exception, with no teak at all!) A bigger job was painting the screen door frame, made to replace the clunky companionway door panels in good weather, which Britt had made in Boulder before selling his workshop tools. However, since the former owner of our boat had left cans of both the basic semi-gloss tinted Cetol and a clear Cetol gloss topcoat, I decided to use both -- two coats of the former topped by two coats of the latter, as the instructions on the cans said. Unfortunately, the gloss was gloppy stuff which went on too thickly and refused to dry properly. I ended up sanding it off and redoing everything in the regular semi-gloss.
We also did some interior teak work. Britt had made a few other teak pieces for the boat -- a shelf for over our bed, and a cover for the stainless steel post in the galley. We called the Caliber factory to find out what type of finish was used on the interior teak; then we bought a can of the appropriate stuff and varnished the new pieces. We also bought a few teak towel racks which needed to be varnished before mounting. The new pieces fit in perfectly, and look like original equipment.
Another much-needed modification to Windom's interior was the installation of three little 12V fans. It didn't take long before it got hot hot hot here, and with the sun beating down on our deck (we have ordered sunshades, but they haven't arrived yet) the cabin got quite stuffy unless a good breeze blew through. The fans make a huge difference and draw only a tiny bit of battery power.
We need to install another halyard, which meant that one of us had to
go up the mast to do it. I successfully talked Britt into letting me
do it, on the grounds that it would be easier for him to winch me up
than the other way around. Whee! What a view. Unfortunately, the
hardware we needed to put the halyard up wasn't on the mast, as we'd
expected, so I need to make another trip up once we get the parts we
need. Gosh, what a shame. :-)
These are only a few of the dozens of little things we've been doing while waiting for the big stuff we ordered to be delivered. We keep a maintenance journal, so that we can keep track of what we've done and when we did it. By looking at our records, we can determine things like how long it takes us to use up each tankful of water (about 6 days for tank #1 and 12 days for the larger #2) and how frequently we need to get our waste holding tank pumped out (3 weeks or so). We can also see when we added equipment or fixed problems.
On some days, the list of accomplishments looks extremely impressive; other days have only one or two items listed. Sometimes this is because doing a task which can be described simply ("installed second engine room vent") requires many steps which take a lot of time (buying the vent cover at West Marine, carefully measuring and re-measuring so that the new hole on the starboard side will line up with the existing hole on the port side, attempting to cut the hole, sharpening the hole saw blade when it turns out to be too dull, finally actually cutting through fiberglass, looking through the box of glues and discovering that we only have the right kind of adhesive in the wrong color, taking a second trip to West Marine for the adhesive, gluing the vent cover over the hole). But sometimes it's because we spent the day goofing off.
On our visit to the USS Hayler, we met a couple who are also doing the quit-work-and-travel-on-a-boat-thing. Liz and Monte lived on a sailboat in California while working, but now they are living on Florie, a trawler (power cruising boat) which they bought in Florida. They've spent the last three years traveling, sometimes in their boat and sometimes in their travel trailer.
We hit it off really well, and did a few things together, but they're about to haul Florie and be land travelers for the summer. We're a little bummed, because it seems like there aren't that many people our ages cruising, and it's been somewhat hard to meet any other people at all. We might cross paths with them in the fall, when they plan to head south down the Intracoastal Waterway, same as us. We also might run into Gale and Marcie, another cruising couple we met at Liz and Monte's Memorial Day picnic; they left Annapolis this week to cruise around the Bay in their trawler Just Us Two.
You might think that there would be some bad blood between the powerboaters and the sailboaters, but the lines aren't drawn quite that way. There's a common bond among the cruisers whether in trawlers or sailboats, and all of us sigh together at the cigarette boats and PWCs, which make a racket and a wake as they speed by, and at the little racing daysailers, which weave around quickly and sometimes scarily close. Both Florie and Windom have similar top speeds, although they prefer windless days and we like a good breeze.
We lucked into a good breeze for an important social occasion: introducing my parents to Windom. Dad came aboard briefly in Rock Hall, when he helped us move our van to Annapolis in preparation for our move here, but my mother hadn't seen our boat yet.
We don't have a full-length finger pier next to our boat here, so while we've been berthed bow-in we've had to make a bit of an athletic move over the lifelines to get aboard. This is because the "gate" in the lifelines is positioned fairly far aft, near the cockpit, and the short finger pier doesn't reach that far. We knew my mother would probably not appreciate having to vault the lines, so one of our preparations for my parents' visit was to dock stern-to for the first time -- something I'd been pretty nervous about the prospect of attempting.
It took four passes, each from a different angle of attack. Each time I'd back in toward the slip, the cross breeze would grab the bow and slide it around to where I didn't want to be. As it became evident that we'd miss our berth, I shifted into forward gear and gunned us back out into the channel. Finally we figured out that if we approached from upwind, close to the slips rather than way out in the channel, the wind acting on the bow would help rather than hinder. It worked perfectly, and we slid nicely into our spot -- and it was so much easier to get off the boat and onto the dock without having to jump the lifelines! (On the other hand, we prefer the privacy of having the cockpit and our entrance further from the dock.)
Mom and Dad had no problem climbing aboard. It was fun showing them "our new house", and even more fun taking them out for a sail. We had perfect sailing conditions, even if we were less than perfect sailors -- we fluffed a few tacks, blundered too close to a race, and managed to get 5 miles out into the Bay before realizing we still had a fender (bouncy rubber thingy to protect the boat from rubbing on the dock pilings) hanging on one side. We did get at least one thing right -- when we returned to the marina, I backed in easily on the second try. Most importantly, we all had a lot of fun, and my folks are eager to get out again.
We were really glad that they'd enjoyed themselves, because when we'd first announced our plans, my parents were less than thrilled. Although they gradually accepted that we were going to do this regardless of their opinion, they still didn't understand what living on a boat entails, or why anyone would want to do it. We're happy we were able to share a little of what we are doing, and they understand us a bit better now.