During the week we found the correct new circuit breaker. So Friday night I dove right into the electric panel. After spending an hour earlier in the week, it took me 15 minutes to install the new circuit breaker. I turned on everything and as a final test, ran our two heaters at the same time. SUCCESS! It felt good getting something done relativly quick and easy and cheap.

We wanted to take the boat out one more time before winter so we invited our friends Gene and Melissa over. As with all of our friends, it was their first time on a sailboat so we got to show them how everything works. We took her out to the bay but there was barely any wind. About 5-9 mph winds kicked in so we put the sails up in an attempt to cut the engine. We hade just enough wind to sail 3-4 knots. It wasn't alot of wind, but we'll take it. We would hate to bring out friends sailing and then just motor around.

We threw out some fishing lines as Gene bestowed some fishing wisdom onto me. I am picking up this sailing thing pretty quick, but fishing doesn't seem to like us. Christine and I joke that the boat is cursed and won't catch any fish. (although we did catch two croaker all summer) So after sail trolling for a bit the winds died and the boat just sat there. We motored over to our favorite anchoring spot off the tip of North Beach/Rose Haven and tossed the hook over. Everyone seemed to enjoy the afternoon as we relaxed and threw hotdogs on the stern grill.

It gets dark quick these days so we pulled up our empty lines and headed back to the marina. We sailed back for about an hour untill giving up on the lame wind and turning on the motor. It was getting cold, too cold for night sailing. Our friends parted and we cooked ourselves two 18 oz steaks to cap off a great day!

Sunday was a surprise. We told our neighbor Captain Rick that we would help him take his boat over to the gas dock to top off his tank. We thought the gas dock was in our creek so we threw some rice in the rice cooker and hopped on his boat. Turns out the gas dock is across the Herring Bay at Herrington Harbour South. No worries, the rice will be fine and we got to catch up with Rick. It was a very windy day Sunday, much better than our weak sailing day the day before. So after filling up Ricks tank, we all decided to take her for a spin. Rick has a 44ft German Frers F&C ketch that is MUCH nicer than ours.

(For Sale Here) So it was cool sailing this larger vessel with an extra mast and sail. We also got quite a few pointers on sailing better. After a brief sail out we gybed and headed back in. Rick said we were great crew and always welcome back aboard. It was a good sail and an informative one, well worth the fried rice patty we came home to.


Pictures from the weekend







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So we are staying warm but it is only November. We just purchased a 2500/5000 watt inverter to have use of outlets while underway. Now we just gotta figure out where to mount it and how to hook it up. Hopefully that will be easier than the sink. Although I'm always a little antsy around electric things. Its one thing to mess up and have water sprayed on me, it's another thing to mess up and electrocute myself.

My first taste of electric work was a success tho when I took out one of our ciruit breakers. Our sailboat savy neighbor Captain Rick told us that the reason our power kept cutting off when we plugged in too many appliances was because our circuit breaker could only hold 15 amps, not the full 30 our shore power can provide. He said it was an easy process so after turning off everything and unplugging our shore power, I dove into the electric wiring and took out the circuit breaker! Without getting electrocuted! Ofcourse I made things harder on myself by removing unneccessary screws and the whole process took close to an hour, but whatever, I did it. So next is a visit to Home Depot and hopefully we can increase the power on our vessel.

Originally we planned on having a seperate bank of batteries with thier own charger and hook the inverter up to that for AC power while underway. But after running out of space and money we scratched that idea and will just run the inverter off of our current battery bank. We plan to get three 92 amp hour glass mat batteries and also a solar power set up. And maybe a wind generator. That can all wait till the spring tho as we wont be leaving the slip during the winter.

As far as winterizing, we've decided to fill the diesel raw water intake with anti-freeze (look out for that blog later). We filled up our water tanks and will wait for a freezing forecast to empty them and replace with anti-freeze. We will run anti-freeze through our head also when it gets close to freezing. Other than that we have our heated blanket while we sleep. A timed heater that comes on at 6 am to heat the cabin in the morning while we prep for the day. We turn it off as we leave. That same timed heater comes on at 4:30 so the boat is warm when we get home. When we get home, we turn off the timed heater and run the stronger space heater and eventually a second radiator heater if needed. Then ofcourse plenty of blankets, hoodys, and as a last resort rum!

PS: Everything we do takes lots of research time and use of many sources, yet I am still very ignorant. I often wonder when reading other blogs, "how did they know to do that!". Maybe they are leaving out the amount of research and learning they went through, or maybe they all just know how to do alot of things. For us, every task at hand is our first experience with the matter.






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On and off for the past several months in search engines I have been trying to research the cruising lifestyle. Its very hard actually to filter through all the cruise line junk, and chartered cruises, so I started playing around with words like quit your job, travel the world, bum traveler, etc. hobo traveler (led to interesting stuff but not what I was looking for) until.... I typed in the magic words 'hobo sailor'. First hit was a blog I instantly fell in love with! Another young couple yay!! Also with a cat, yay again! Love the writing style, love the pictures, love everything! Except .... That they just finished their cruising.  Oh well, maybe they'll go for round two by the time we ship off next November 1st. Less than a year!! Here is the link to their blog, maybe anyone reading this will find it as entertaining as I did.

http://chadlawie.blogspot.com/





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We spent the weekend with friends and family but the main focus of the week was our new sink.

What I thought would be a relativly easy project turned into a nightmare. It was impossible to find a reasonably priced sink that would fit into our counter area. We finally opted to squeeze a standard 25''x22'' sink in there that we got at Home Depot for $100 including the faucet. It was only downhill from there. It was really hard to work in such a tight space. After two nights of cutting away the counter top with a varity of tools the sink finally fit into the drop in. Another night spent converting the double drain plumbing into a single drain plumbing. A failed night of cauking. And one final night of squeezing beneath the sink to tighten all the screws, hook up the water, and seal the sink. We turn on the water and it starts spraying beneath so a second try is required. The second attempt is much better and there is only a slight leak near the drain. So we applied ample liquid sealant and called it a sink. This was one of the hardest projects of my life and I'm glad it is over. Atleast the new sink looks good! (well I think so) And we are glad to have saved a few dollars by doing it ourself.

The above pic is the before and after.

Next up, remove oven and winterize boat!




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This past weekend had some work and some play.

Friday we drove down to my moms to move all of my lil sisters furniture into a Uhaul. Not fun. Saturday we dressed up in our Halloween costumes and went to Calypso. FUN! Sunday was a day of rest.

Although we did manage to leave the house in search of a new sink. We decided our two small sinks arnt practical and we would rather have one large sink, so that project begins...

For Halloween Christine was a pirate gypsy and I was a banana. Enjoy




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Well it seems our extremely heavy and fancy ac/heater/dehumidifier on wheels is not much good for heating the boat. It has an exhaust? On the back that we swear blows out more cold air than it does hot air.... So we bought an extremely cheap radiator from Target. I remember having one in my detached (cold) room at my moms and that thing would make you sweat! This one, not so much. We are thinking about returning it for a higher end one. Combined with the space heater we also bought it would probably be perfect,... if our power didn't blow every time we dared try to run both and the tv or fridge or electric blanket. So far the electric blanket has been our best winter purchase, although the inside of the V berth is getting kinda wet (need more dehumifying!!) and I'm worried about us zapping ourselves in our sleep.

...It's only October we are reminding ourselves. Our Friday night consisted of playing rummy cube in our winter coats and being *forced* to drink rum for warmth.

Ideas?



On the bright side, since it seems you cant buy CNG around here for the stove anywhere and therefore we have been making all of our food in a rice cooker (second most amazing purchase ever)((stove for sale if interested)), but some things you just cant cook in there, such as eggs or bacon, or hamburgers, I mean, you COULD, one at a time, but anyways, someone recommended to us.... THE HOT PLATE! Which we bought and also find AMAZING!





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