Out of the yard, On to the Mooring

Some thoughts from Brady:  Last blog post we were in a boat yard, but after 3 weeks of back breaking work we finally managed to get the TravelLift to lift us up and into the water.  Now we are in an anchorage and tied to our mooring ball.  A mooring ball is a floating ball attached to a chain and then the chain is attached to a concrete block on the bottom of the ocean.  Here’s a picture: 

The dinghy.

Life in the anchorage is fun most of the time.  When we need to go into shore we get in our dinghy, start the outboard engine and ride to shore.  At night we haul our dinghy up a halyard so no one can steal it.  A halyard is a rope that goes up to the mast and back down to connect to whatever you are lifting up.  We attach one end to a winch and put a winch handle on the winch and crank it up.  Now you know more about life in an anchorage.

Our boat in the Travelift.

And, some thoughts from Jamie:  As you know the boat has been out of the water so we can work on it.  You are probably wondering how you can fix the bottom of our boat.  Well, there is a big machine called a Travelift 

The "ditch".

that picks up your boat out of the water.  Here is a picture of one.  Those straps on the Travelift are the things that pick up the boat.  But the straps move down and up.  A guy controls the Travelift by getting in it.  There are controls by where the guy sits.  The Travelift moves on airplane tires because the Travelift is heavy so it needs strong tires.  There is a ditch where the travel lift goes in.  It lowers the straps down and moves the boat in or out of the water.

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Yes, folks, at long last we have made it out of the boatyard, and into to water.   As Brady mentioned, we did, indeed, put in days of “back breaking work”.  We sorted through piles of odds and ends,  sanded and painted the hull with toxic paint,  painted a new boot stripe, buffed part of the hull,  put in a new depth sounder thru-hull transducer, replaced the bow-sprit bolts, replaced the drains in the galley and head sinks, re-caulked the chainplates, replaced the dinghy hardware, replaced the cutlass bearing, installed a prop-cutter (to cut thru any line that would otherwise foul the prop), followed by our newly shiny bronze prop...and probably a few things I have forgotten about. 

Sorting odds and ends.

Buff and Buffer.

Roller King, making Darth Vader noises.

Drain work.  

Transducer removal.

Boot-striping.

The new bulkhead, model number 6.

Drilling out the hole for the new transducer.

Caulking the chain-plates.

Shiny prop, new prop-cutter, cutlas bearing,and prop shaft assembly completed.

Don’t ask about the things that we DIDN’T get finished.  OK, ok, since you’ve asked... here’s a partial list: fix the watermaker, rebuild the head, replace the oil-change pump, mount the new bilge pump switch, install the new Nauta tank, figure out what instrument will work with our new transducer; buy and install said instrument, install the new bulkhead behind the refrigeration; a bulkhead, I might add, that has been built and rebuilt no less than six, (yes, 6!) times due to strange warping issues.  And I might be forgetting a few things.  Like buying several months worth of food and provisions, for example.   We’re tired.  But we are in the water now, and safely tied up to our mooring where we will continue to knock projects off the list until enough of them are completed for us to call it good enough to drop the mooring ball and head out across the Gulf Stream.  For now, however, we’re gonna take a nap.