T Minus 2 Days … 9 Hours … 4 Minutes …55 Seconds!

We are down to the final weekend and have accepted the fact that we won’t be finished by Monday. It actually feels like a weight has been taken off our shoulders. We are ok with getting whatever we haven’t completed done over the course of the summer.

Becky will be shipped to Wiarton on Monday and I have scheduled a new survey to be done on Tuesday. This is so I can have her insured for the correct amount. Once that is completed she can be put in the water. In preparation for that momentous moment I installed this today.

I know that this seems like an obvious thing to do but I was recently told that marinas will attach this plug to the steering wheel to make sure that the boat owner installs it before the boat sees the water.

Yesterday was not a typical boat day.

I have been surprised by the fact that I actually have people following along with my blog from all over the world. I mentioned in a previous blog that there have been views from Sweden, The Netherlands, China, Finland, and the US (and others) but there are also a lot from Canada.

One person in particular contacted me directly to ask if I would mind if he came to see the boat and, since he only lived a few hours away, made the trip to St Jacobs early last week.

Jeff has the same model and year of Sea Ray that I have and has been a great source of information over the last few months. He sent me this photo of his boat sitting in the Big Chute Marine Railway on the Trent-Severn.

It is amazing how much of the boat hangs over the edge.

Then he made the big mistake of offering to help with our renovation. Normally I might have said no, since Donald won’t even let me work on the cabinets, but Jeff’s expertise was more in the area of electronics and boat systems. If you have been following along on this blog you would know that this is absolutely not ours.

So I took him up on his offer.

He then sweetened the pot by bringing along someone who was also following my blog and who has an extensive knowledge of basically everything to do with boats. He also has worked with the Caterpillar 3208 engines which we have on our boat.

He made it even easier on us by being named Jeff. We only had to remember one name!!

After taking a tour of the boat they went right to work completely overhauling the septic system. All new flexible pipe right from the accumulator to the pump. It brought a tear to my eye…

Here they are taking the 5 minute break I allowed them to have.

That is Jeff on the left…

Jeff seemed to have the easier job here watching Jeff do the dirty work in the engine room.

So typical of Jeff!

They actually looked like they were having fun here.

Here is the pump with new bellows and duckbill valve. All ready to face whatever we can send it’s way.

We learned a lot about our boat and more specifically our engines. It was as if Donald and I were in school again so I took notes. Jeff…not Jeff… was telling us how to maintain the engines which we greatly appreciated. We know nothing about them. This is from years of experience and not from someone trying to sell a product on line.

Then they made the same mistake again. Offering to help us in Wiarton if we need it. This one is on them….

We got together for a very quick group photo and, although it doesn’t look like it, we were all standing 6 feet apart. It really is amazing what you can do with cameras these days.

Their help was greatly appreciated. Now we can use the facilities without fear.

It is getting late and we will be back at it in about 8 hours so I will just give the highlights of what else happened.

We cut in most of the openings for the electronics on the helm. We still have a few more to do. I put a first coat of gel-coat on today but didn’t take a photo.

Donald is cutting the opening for the chart plotter. Trying to match the speed of the vacuum to the jigsaw is harder than it looks.

In this photo Donald is cutting a hole for each of the switches. This makes it easier to router out the plywood. We had a template made so that the openings were consistent.

We got the steps back with the new handrail. Donny from Weber’s Fabricating is an artist.

It might look like snow blowing around but it’s only dust.

Donald installed the doors/drawer fronts and hardware on the galley cabinets.

We also continued with the finishing and installation of the headliner panels. It will be difficult to get them done by Monday but we will give it our best shot.

I forgot to close the door to the mid-berth when I took this shot.

And finally we fitted the support system for the Canadian flag table in the cockpit. This made out of aluminum and gets installed much like a trailer hitch. The arm and top plate can be removed if needed. I will take a photo later with the table in place. We don’t want to take a chance of it getting damaged.

The upholstery will be another 3+ weeks and the bimini will be installed in mid August so the cockpit will be looking like this for a while.

Sunday will be my last blog before she is out of here but there will be many more to come.