Back at It!

We're back! It's been quite a while since we posted here, which has prompted a few people to ask - some directly and some indirectly - whether we have given up on either the blog or the boat. We are happy to report that neither is the case! The truth is that after such an intense first year or projects, we were both pretty ready for a break. When the boat came out of the water last October, we intended to keep working on it this past winter as well - maybe at half the intensity of the previous year, we originally thought. But after I made a solo trip in November to tackle a few small things, we kept pushing our next visit out... What started as "maybe we'll go every third weekend" became "well, maybe we'll just take a break until after the holidays" eventually became "hmmm... maybe closer to the season starting"... In the end we made it up only once before splash to do a few things that had to be done out of the water. So, the break became pretty real, and it was also quite nice! We enjoyed some down time, took a couple of trips to some beautiful destinations, and even dove into music learning for a total change of pace. 

But, we are happy to report that we are back in the water and - once again - hard at work! And while we do have some big ongoing projects, we've even started dipping our toes into decorating and "moving in"... In the image above, the glass mosaic that we had made for the Tiara has found a new home in the salon. We are definitely excited about some more down time on the water, soon!

While we would have loved to have some more projects completed for this boating season, we don't regret the break. It's definitely a lot nicer to do work on the boat in the water than in a warehouse, so our winter of intense projects probably won't be repeated anytime soon. That's not to say that no progress was made during the winter, as our marina completed a few projects for us, including the installation of a new Maxwell windlass, which we look forward to testing out soon. They also modified our bow pulpit, expanding the cutout to accommodate the Delta anchor that we wanted to mount. The upgraded setup looks pretty nice: 

Our project weekends this year have been fun but still intense enough to leave me SO sore for a few days. Sometimes it's hard to even understand how a couple of days of tinkering can have such an effect, but Becca - who often documents my "boat yoga" - reminds me that I am probably getting up and down and in and out of weird positions dozens of times. It constantly looks something like this:

BTW, the top center image cuts the best part out, I think I get style points for the calf raise I was apparently doing the whole time: 

Our main focus this year has been to make progress on the waste system installation, the last hurdle to sleeping comfortably and concern-free at the boat. Someday I'll do a deep dive post with all the details about that project, but am happy to report that we believe we've completed the electrical and the freshwater supply side of that project. So it should be a matter of putting in the new waste tank, hoses, and vents, and we should be good to go. We'll see!

We are doing a lot of other things as well... On some of the pics above I was re-mounting the coolant recovery bottles, blocking around the engine batteries to secure them better, and installing the re-finished bezels on the flybridge gauges. This last one was an easy project that happened out of necessity, as I couldn't find replacements for the larger ones. So, I repainted them all! They came out looking very nice (bottom right). Hopefully they'll hold up! Top right picture: looks like Becca was using my torso as a footrest as I was working on securing the gauges back on... But to be fair, she was playing multiple critical roles as well, including tool fetcher and emotional manager, without which the projects would be exponentially more difficult.

Also, Becca is more than happy to come to the rescue when I need a break and/or am about to lose it with the difficulty in accessing something (which is, most of the time!)... She likes to use technology (i.e. the phone camera) to "see" better, which means I sometimes find funny videos like this one on my phone. 

(I particularly enjoy the moment she thinks, wait, why can't I get this screw with my hand, I had just loosened it!)

So that's the update for today! It took me being on an international flight (hello Ireland!) for me to dedicate the time to do this... But we are hoping to start doing more frequent, even if smaller updates, more often!