You Call That Progress?

Over the last few months we've made some progress on several of our projects.  Of course, how we define progress may be a little different than how you do.  For us it's mostly "one step forward, two steps back".  Still, I'm a "glass is half full" kinda guy so I tend to focus on that one step forward.  I thought I'd do a quick blurb here to show some pics of what we've been doing.

In the aft head and aft stateroom we finally got around to closing in the air ducts from the Espar heater installation.  Needed about 14 months to really give it some serious thought.  In the end we had our good friend Anthony design some nice enclosures for us.  They're made with solid teak and milled to match the surrounding cabinetry.  There's also a recessed grill to let the heat escape.  We're really pleased with how this turned out.  The piece of teak used on the face in the aft stateroom is dark but in the picture it looks much darker than it actually is.  The shelf with the sombrero used to be about 3" wide and Anthony widened it to 10".  Much more usable now.  In fact we were originally thinking to put cabinets in there that would extend up to the ceiling but changed our plans when we decided to sell the boat.  With that nice wide shelf it would be very easy to add cabinets in there now using that shelf as the base.  Good project for the new owner!

We also got some work done on the instruments by adding a multi-function display at the helm.  I had the grab bar modified to create a mounting plate that would hold the display lower and be less of an obstruction.  It also allows it to be turned around so it can face forward.  Handy for when the boat is sailing on it's own with auto-pilot.  The display is mounted in a plastic instrument "pod" that comes from the factory in an "arctic white" that just didn't look right with the Island Packet beige.    I was unable to find a good match in a spray paint and struggled to make the most of it.

In my last installment I told about my first effort and how it came out two shades too dark.  For round two I tried a different paint, slightly lighter.  I sanded the original coat and sprayed on the new paint.  It reacted with the old paint and wrinkled up across the entire surface.  Yikes!  What a mess!  I sanded it down and tried spraying on a coat of primer thinking that would form a barrier for the new paint.  The primer also wrinkled up.  Grrrrr.

I ended up sanding down the entire housing, by hand, removing every bit of paint.  The original paint I used was a store brand and was incompatible with anything else.  Yes, I know, ya gets what ya pays for.  After 6 hours of sanding I sprayed on a coat of primer and two coats of color.  It's not an exact match for the Island Packet color but it's a lot closer than "arctic white".  That was a fun project.

Once I got the display mounted I ran into another minor headache.  The data cable for the radar had a plug end that wouldn't fit through the grommet that I mounted at the back of the steering pedestal.  In the picture the grommet is the round fitting with the black rubber center below the shelf.  I had to pull the wire back through the entire length of the boat and feed in the small end first through the grommet.  To save some time I attached one end of some twine to the data cable before I pulled it back to the cockpit.  Once I fed it through the grommet I was able to pull the string from the end up by the mast and drag the cable back into place without having to yank up the entire cabin floor.  This actually worked pretty well and with Cheri's help the job was completed pretty quickly.  This is good because I only have so much hair left to pull out in frustration.

We took a vacation from March 28th to April 7th and visited with Cheri's brother and sister-in-law (Scott and Terri) in San Diego.  They have a beautiful home in Point Loma overlooking the entire bay and city down below and you can see down the coast line all the way to Mexico.  Incredible.  We had a great time visiting with them and it was especially cool to stay in a place bigger than 250 square feet that had flushing toilets.

When we got back on Sunday the 8th the weather was clear and breezy so we decided to go out for a short sail.  As we got out into open water the wind was blowing a steady 20 knots, gusting to 30, out of the WNW.  We had a quick sail across the Bay on a broad reach under full main and staysail.  Once we got to Bloody Point Light outside of Eastern Bay we came about and sailed back close hauled.  The wind increased to a steady 30 knots, gusting to 35 and occasionally getting as high as 40 knots.  The waves weren't bad though and it was a nice sail, still under full main and staysail.  As we got into Herring Bay we had to tack back and forth and on the 3rd tack the outhaul on the main let go with a loud "crack", like canon fire.  Cheri thought we hit something and was mentally preparing to abandon ship.  Because of the racket caused by the main flapping in the wind it quickly became apparent what had happened.  The picture shows the outhaul running along the top of the boom to the clew of the mainsail.  We fired up the engine, furled the sails and headed home.  To finish off the day we backed into our new slip (lucky #13) in 30 knot winds coming at us across our port side.  Took us a little longer than usual but we managed OK with no raised voices, no grrr at all.  I'm talkin' teamwork here!

So now I've got another project to take care of before we can even consider our sail around the DelMarVa.  Our running rigging has dropped the subtle hint that it needs to be replaced.  Let's see, I've got two weekends to get ready.  Something tells me we're not going to make it.  Might have to fall back on that "glass is half full" mentality and adjust our plans and make the most of it.  On the bright side, we'll soon have all new running rigging.  Of course we'll also be penniless.

Half full, half full.