The Reason Why I Didn’t Post Anything Last Week Is Because I Was Lazy!

I figured it has been long enough since my last post and, like getting back to exercising, there is no better time than now to begin.

Over the last two weeks we have had our ups and downs with the boat. I think I will start with the downs.

When doing a renovation of this size it is inevitable that there will be bugs that have to be worked out and I’m not talking about mosquitoes although we are still waiting for the hatch screens to come in.

I ordered them through a local supplier before Covid hit so I knew there would be a delay… but not four months. I believe in buying things through local businesses as much as possible and also ordered the helm controls (both gear and throttle) through this supplier as well.

As of last week these also haven’t arrived yet after also being on order for four months. I can do without the screens but I will be needing the controls soon … so I canceled that order and found them on line. I ordered them this past Monday and they came in today. Just sayin’ ….

Let’s see … what else? Oh yes. Two weeks ago Leanne and I arrived in Wiarton to enjoy our second weekend on the boat. It was going to be a hot weekend so we were looking forward to the air conditioning. We only had access to one of the shore power outlets and so we had to be careful about how much power we used.

I said we had to be careful … I didn’t say were.

I ran out of propane for the bbq so decided to finish off the chicken using a frying pan. I think you can all see where this is going. We blew a fuse when I turned the stove on. I thought it was going to just trip the breaker but it didn’t (this is something that I still have to get the electrician to deal with) and so we were without power. It was getting hot.

And we were hungry.

I was able to get a hold of the electrician finally and we figured out how to fix it temporarily. It took about 2 hours but I felt proud of myself for keeping the swearing to a bare minimum.

Since I am staying with the “downs” I will now skip to last Sunday. I noticed that the condensate pan for the mid-berth air conditioner was leaking. One of the hoses that was to take away the water wasn’t sealed properly and there was some water in the bilge below. I used the vacuum to suck up the water and caulked around the hose. Pretty proud of myself again for fixing this potential issue until I noticed more water down below.

I turned off that air conditioner and, once again, removed the water that had pooled down below.

Around supper I decided to look at that area again to see how much it had dried out (I bought a little fan from Home Depot that is used to dry carpet.)

It’s a compact little fan that I can keep on board with the vacuum.

There was even more water and the air conditioner wasn’t on.

Once again … no swearing.

Leanne suggested that I check under the fridge where we have an access panel so we can get to the pex fittings and part of the fresh water tank.

I pulled out the fridge and water was literally streaming out of what turned out to be a crack in our brand new fresh water tank.

I can’t honestly say there wasn’t swearing.

I sat there for a moment trying to process what was happening. There was a crack in our new tank. The first question was why was there a crack and the second was why was there water in our new tank? I didn’t put water in our new tank.

I turned off the city water and turned on the pump to get rid of the water. It took about 10+ minutes to drain.

I then called one of my emergency lifelines … Jason. I thought I would give Jeff the night off.

He gave me a very quick introductory course to a boat’s water system. You have to remember that Donald and I know cabinets. We don’t know too much about plumbing and we know very little about electrical.

Since I didn’t actually put water into the tank via the outlet on the side of the boat there was no reason for it to have water in it. To cut to the chase I think that the person who did my plumbing found the existing water pump and reused it. I was definitely very specific about only using new parts for the water and electrical systems.

It was a defective pump and was allowing city water to go into the tank at a very slow rate. It took that long to fill. We have gotten into the habit of turning off the water at the dock whenever we left the boat even if we were just going out in the dinghy.

We are in the process of getting a new pump.

Here is a photo of the offending pump. The crack is on the top edge in the middle of the tank. It is accessible so will be a project for another day and once I figure out how to do it. We realistically won’t be using the tank this year but it will have to be done at some point.

So there you have it. The water and electrical issues that we have experienced so far. I’m not kidding myself … there will be more.

And now for the ups.

Our daughter Maddie joined us last Saturday and spent much of the weekend doing school work. She is in her second year at U of Waterloo taking Health Studies. She definitely didn’t get this school work ethic from me.

The moon was close to being full that night.

We went kayaking the next morning.

Leanne and I also took the dinghy out a few times.

This brings up a conversation that I had with Jason about radios. He asked me if I had a portable radio along with me on the dinghy. I told him that we had our cell phones with us. Jason then explained that a cell phone would be useless if we ended up in the water. He isn’t often right but I guess he was about this.

This showed up at my door a few days later.

Thanks to Jason and Kevin for their boat warming gift.

You know Jason … bow thrusters would also keep us safer ….

Here is our boat with all the toys.

In case anyone was wondering I did manage to get some work done. I put in one headliner panel. One!

I sprayed and applied the vinyl in the cockpit.

I also had an oval trim sample made for the v-berth windows. This is made from mirrored stainless.

Since the panels on the v-verth walls are flat, each trim will have to custom made for each window. I will use this one to take measurements for each of the others and have them made in the fall.

This past week Donald finished off the Ipe treads for the stairs. In this photo he is adding some fluting to the surface.

And then he applied the Ipe conditioner.

Donald is on vacation this week so of course we went to the boat today. We brought up the reupholstered seating for the cockpit to make sure they fit. The helm is being gel-coated now so we didn’t leave them in place.

We took along one of the back cushions as well to try out.

We were also able to install the cushions for what we are going to call the reading nook by the stairs. This could also serve as a bed for someone that we don’t want to come back to the boat.

The Ipe treads look fantastic.

We are hoping that the helm will be finished sometime next week so we can have the electronics installed and then we can finally start this thing up.

Wouldn’t it be funny … if after all this time of working on the boat … all this energy … not to mention money …… no … I won’t even say it. I’m sure the engines will start.

I’m pretty sure.