Back To The Boat

You do you, Mommy. I’m just going to lay here & get my winter tan on.

Hi there! Since we last met, I have not only been to the boat once, but twice! Each visit was less than 2 hours but it’s a start. It’s been raining a lot this past week. The times when it wasn’t, it was about 45 degrees out. Brrr!!! I mean, that’s the temperature it usually is, at this time of year, out on the water. -Which probably means it’s in the 30s out on the water!

On Sunday, when I finally first got to the boat, I noticed something a little concerning… Our dinghy had about a thousand gallons of water sitting in it! I’m surprised it didn’t sink! I guess that means for now that we’re safe & sound when riding about in our dinghy. We sure have given it some endurance tests!

I think it had been pouring rain about every other day last week. On the way over, it did occur to me that there might be a little water in the dinghy. Not sure what I was thinking. -That the magical dock fairy was flying around to make sure nothing was going awry on our boat or at the dock? Considering that fairies can’t put on heavy sweaters & wool pants, I’m sure she’s in Mexico for the winter.

Anyway, since Zephyr was taking the day off & Matt was working, I decided the quickest way to solve the issue would be to bail out water with a mixing bowl from the galley. Was this because I wasn’t sure where the portable pump was & I didn’t want to take time to look in every compartment to get it? Yes. It took me about 15 minutes but it made me feel like I was being very productive! Hey, better to be bailing water out of your dinghy at the dock than while at sea!

I forgot to measure, to be exact, but there’s at least 12” of water sitting in there!

Almost there! -Progress after about 8 minutes of bailing water.

Floor is exposed to dry air but there’s still a ton of water in the crevices. -Which I will have Matt get out because his big muscles allow him to flip the dinghy over!

After I bailed a couple of bowlfuls of rainwater out, I noticed this butterfly, that was on the dinghy, hadn’t moved. I thought this was kind of odd as in my experience butterflies don’t generally just chill out with humans. I moved toward it & saw that it was clinging onto the rope with its legs & trying to pull itself away from the dinghy. It fluttered when I got near but didn’t fly away. I tried to scoop it up so that it wouldn’t fall into the harbor but it fluttered away from me & fell into the water in the dinghy! Luckily, I could then quickly gather it in my palms & put it on the dock so it could dry off immediately. It was able to flutter around on the dock & get a second or two of air time but not enough to fly away. I couldn’t see any injury to it’s wings but it may have been microscopic. The wind was blowing & I was scared that it was going to blow it right into the water. So I gathered it up again & walked it outside the dock to a little landscaped garden area. I thought that it might just need some rest to get its strength again to fly. It was there an hour later when we left & looked a little more mobile. So hopefully it was eventually able to join its family wherever they may be.

I hope you were able to dry off & fly away, Mirabella, the Monarch Butterfly!

Now that I was a butterfly’s hero, I decided to get back to work on the boat. I knew I wasn’t going to make a huge dent in all that there is to do but the momentum usually starts flowing after working on one thing & then another.

Proof that we were on MerSea in the last few days!

One thing we are doing is changing sides in the v-berth. -Or at least are going to give it a try. I had to move out everything anyway a month ago; to clean up mildew that was starting to appear. So now was the time to reorganize everything, if at all. The reason we are trying this is because one, there’s a little more room on the port side & I have more stuff. Kind of hard to explain how this is so, (not the part about me having more stuff but the part about the port side having more room), but I’ll take a photo facing the other way next time. Two, Zephyr is more content to sleep on my side of the bed so he’d have more room too. Three, it may be warmer on the port side? The right side gets more ventilation & Matt doesn’t love being hot quite the way I do. And four, there are outlets on the starboard side & Matt’s phone runs down its battery faster than mine. So we’ll see how this change works out.

Beginning stages of re-arranging.

You won’t believe it when you see the photos below but I’ve been doing a bit of organizing. We learned a lot when we were cruising in October. We know what we need & what we don’t & where to keep what we do need. I’m sure it will be a constant learning process but it really helped to live on the boat for a month & experience the day in & day out of what flows best.

Oh mess! I will tackle you next time!

One thing I’ve been wanting to do is get the safety netting down. It makes getting on & off the boat a bit cumbersome but it’s nice to have when cruising along the coast & when night sailing. However, here at home, we don’t need it. It took a while to put up & I knew it might take a while to take down. I also wanted to do it methodically & roll it up so that it doesn’t get tangled while in storage for a year. And I kept forgetting to bring something to roll it around. But I remembered today! Yes, a wrapping paper roll! It’s not the sturdiest thing to use, but it’s what I had handy at home during this time of year. And it worked well enough.

One side un-netted! One to go!

I also wanted to measure the open sides of the cockpit. I plan to make an enclosed luxury cockpit with a hot tub for those cold nights along the coast! Well, I had planned. Maybe dreamed is the better word for what I did. In reality, I am going to make 2 side panels of trimmed Eisenglass. These will hopefully make cruising a little bit warmer & more comfortable. -Especially when sailing at night.

Let’s see how close I can get to making our cockpit look like this.

All in all, I feel good about getting a little bit of a start to getting back to doin boat stuff. Who knows? Maybe we’ll brave it in the next week or so & actually go sailing. -Or at least go motoring out of the harbor if there’s no wind. At the very least I’ll put lights up on the boat & we’ll stay overnight on her.

‘Tis the season to share your cookies with me, Daddy!

The goal now is to get to the boat at least 3 times before next week’s blog post! Hold me to it! At the very least I want to organize & tidy up the inside. Let’s see if we get any tasks on the to-do list crossed off!

I hope all of you are starting off the holidays with joy & not stress. Make fun your goal for this season. Get some coal & hand it out to anyone who’s being a negative Nelly around you. Actually, coal is hard for most people to come by & pretty toxic. So maybe a wooden toothpick instead. That way they can pick all the nitpickiness out of themselves! Or, on the flip side, you can carry around cookies & hand them out to everyone who is pleasant to be around & withhold them from any grouches in the crowd. That’s, “No cookies for you, crabby Conrad!”.

Aside from that, thanks for reading! And I’ll be back next week!