Today is exactly one year since we bought ol Bright Eyes. So in our eyes, she is one year old. However since she was built in 1985 we have decided that this date will also represent her real birthday, so Bright Eyes officially turns 25 years old today! Since we are 24 and 25 years old also, we like to think that this is fine age for her, maybe even her prime years!



For her birthday Bright Eyes got a new paint job. Last week we put the first coat on and this weekend we put the second coat on. We saved a lil bit for the spots under the stilts. We also bought new paint for her "racing stripe". We will repaint her dark blue stripes on next weekend. Bright Eyes is getting quite the pampering.



One thing she is not getting though is a new wax/buffing job. Christine did a great job washing the boat down with boat soap that the hull already shines pretty good. We attempted to put that final coat of wax on and buff but that lasted all of 20 minutes before we got tired and decided we weren't making much of a difference.

This how far we got.


In other exciting news, I am eager to announce that the GARMIN install is complete! After the last post, I had enough messing around on my own and recruited help. I first went to the cruiser forums and got some trouble shooting ideas. Then I took the whole unit, wires and all, into West Marine and checked that it worked. It did so the problem was now officially with our boat. I tested voltage at the control panel with the unit connected without a breaker and got 7.5 volts. Then I hooked up the unit to the batteries directly and got 13 volts and it came on. So the problem had to be in our electrical wiring. Then luckily our good friend and handyman Nick came over and we dove into the wires. We started testing the voltage at different points but then Nick quickly noticed a loose ground. The bolt on the original grounding plate was loose. Once I tightened that up, we hooked up the Garmin and BINGO it came on! What a relief. It took all of one hour to resplice and rerun all the wires and now it is all systems go.

Here you can see we are on land and at 0 depth! O no we've run aground...


One good thing about this Garmin trouble is my knowledge of electrical connections as grown immensely. Which is one of the reasons (the other being money) that we try to do all our installs ourselves. We want to learn as much as possible about our lil home.

The rest of the weekend was spent celebrating and cleaning/organizing. When we bought the boat, the cabinets were filled with stuff we had no idea what to use it for. Now that we know what different products are used for (and even bought some products we already had, doh!) we organized and inventoried all our boat products.

Here is one of a few storage cabinets.


Lastly, one of our folding bikes came in! We got these folding bikes so that we can explore the islands better. They might not win any races but they should provide us some weekly exercise too.






If you like paint click HERE

If you like Garmins click HERE



Editors Note: Bright Eyes is still on land but that wasn't exciting enough for this blog so the lead pic is from her survey day.

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