p { margin: 0; }

Every five years or so we leave the boat out of the water for a season. The boat is so much work to launch and is so expensive to maintain that I feel compelled to use it as many weekends as possible during our short New England summer. I avoid non-boating activities sometimes to the disappointment of my wife. I can make up for this somewhat when the boat is left out. It also allows me to catch up on some of my maintenance tasks. Since the boat is shipped home for winter storage, it really doesn’t cost me anything to store the boat home for that year. This gives my boating budget a small boon for that year too. Its been six years since I’ve left the boat out. I think its time once again. I’m tentatively planning to leave her out next summer.

I don’t know what I’ll do for weekends and vacation next summer. We have a camper too. We might do some camping. I asked my wife it she wanted to take a cross-country trip with the camper next summer but she doesn’t want to take that much time off work. My wife has a place on a lake in northern New York. We’ll likely spend some time there, but its too far to drive every weekend. I should have quite a lot of time to catch up stuff around the house and on boat projects. For once I can say there are no machinery or rigging projects that require my attention. I’ll focus my energy on cosmetic issues. Here’s what’s on my list so far.

New dinghy. For most folks this is a trivial but expensive project. Our dinghy is an ocean-going vessel however. It has a 30hp engine with remote steering and controls, simple electronics, and navigation lights. Our dinghy is 23 years old. Its tired. Replacing this is on the top of our list. There is some work involved to fit-out the small boat out.

Soda-blast cleaning for the bottom. Apply a barrier-coat and fresh bottom paint.

Touch-up the topsides. The topsides are painted with 2-part polyurithane. There are a few scratches and dings that should be repaired. The shear-stripe between the toe-rail and rub-rail in particular needs to be redone.

Strip and refinish the toe-rail. I’ve been using cetol for almost 20 years now. I’m disgusted with the results. The finish builds up over time and turns dark. It eventually starts pealing. I’m considering Semco. They have some new products that don’t have that dark brown color and I’ve heard some good things about it. Anyone else using it? While I have the toe-rail stripped, I’ll remove and refasten where the plugs have worn through.

Lay down a teak deck in the cockpit. I started working on this last winter but ran out of time.

Either rebuild the four forward side-lights or replace with new.

I want to do something with the head. The original wallpaper looks tired. The shower stall has some damage to the gelcoat. The storage cabinet behind the sink has no dividers or bins to stow stuff so the contents rattle around and make a mess. I’ll replace the floor tile in there too.

There’s always interior woodwork that needs attention.

The stove needs replacement.

The mast wiring needs attention. The mast could use a new coat of paint.

The bilge is filthy.

Reorganize my tools. I currently have tools and spare parts scattered all around the boat.

The nav station could be reorganized. In particular, the space under it could be better utilized. I’d like to build some lockers under there. Maybe this would be a good place to stow tools.

I’ve always wanted to extend the width of the aft bunk. My thought was to add a drop-down lee-board and a filler cusion that can be used to extend the width by about 10 inches. This would require a new cushion, maybe a memory-foam matress.

Refresh the non-skid paint on the side-decks.

Lay-down better RF ground straps in the bilge. I have a roll of copper-foil I bought a few years ago for this but never had time to lay it down.

Service the through-hulls.

Refinish the cockpit table. Maybe redo the binnacle instrument cluster.

I could use a new headsail.

Hmm, maybe one year isn’t enough!

Rich
BlackSheep

Post generated from Pearson424 Forum using Mail2Forum