Getting a boat ready to go to sea is a task. We will be gone for seven months so we have to prepare the boat both structurally and for living aboard all of that time. We have to decide what we will eat and then buy locally what we either can't get overseas or what is too expensive to buy away from home. Think about your favorite cereal or hot sauce. Even though the rest of the world shops and eats just like us they may not stock what we want. So we load the boat with those "can't do without" provisions.
We also have to prepare the boat mechanically. Since our last cruise to Bermuda in 2012 the boat has not been used very often. Things aboard a boat don't like disuse and punish you for inattention. In the past few months we have served at the pleasure of the boat. Here is a brief list of what we have had to do to get ready for cruising.
Replace all of the house batteries and rewire the battery room. Install a new generator with more power so the morning coffee crowd can have their coffee and toast at the same time without blowing a fuse. It will also run the entire air conditioning system and charge the battery banks at the same time. Replace the broken wind instrument and the inoperative tricolor/anchor light. Sounds simple but that took us several weeks of running new wires in the mast, looking for shorted wires and awaiting use of the man lift so we could work at the top of the mast. Our mast is 65 feet tall and to be safe you can only work at the top in light winds. We installed a fresh water flush toilet which allowed us to use the old toilet's raw water intake for the watermaker. We had been using the air conditioning raw water intake for the watermaker but we needed to use that one for the new generator. There is a lot of robbing Peter to pay Paul on the boat.
We also reran watermaker plumbing so we could fill the starboard water tanks from the water maker. That allows us to fill all four 50 gallon tanks from the water maker. While we were working on the water maker we also ran new wiring to the watermaker and re-commissioned it. We use a Spectra Catalina watermaker which produces about 13 gallons an hour of pure water from salt water
I'll keep the list short so we can jump ahead to moving the boat to Dennis Point, Maryland to be hauled to paint the bottom and put in a new thru hull for the air conditioning so it will have a raw water supply of its own. We left Norfolk on a beautiful fall day, mid 80's and wind from the southwest. By the time we got to the Potomac it was blowing 40 with driving rain as a nor'easter arrived to ruin our painting and hole drilling plans. We have been sitting up on the hard for three days now watching it rain. You can't put on bottom paint in the rain, but you can do the prep work of sanding and taping. The problem is that it is cold also so when you get wet in the rain you really come to despise boat repair or as Joan puts it "I hate this boat." While we are here we have to sand and paint the sail drives and polish the props along with installing new zincs. Our sail drives are aluminum, yes aluminum, and King Neptune has aluminum for dinner every night for a bedtime snack. Zinc is a less noble element than aluminum and we try to fool Neptune by offering up the sacrificial zincs instead. Instead of just clamping them on like shaft owning mono hullers do, we have to pay our dues by removing the entire prop and hub assembly to get to the inside zincs. It is the price we pay for sailing flat.
The dogs are bored and wet, we are grumpy and wet and the boat is just plain wet. The forecast is for three more days of rain. No internet, poor phone service and the marina restaurant is closed for the season. Help!