The air conditioning is working. The fridge is working.

It even keeps Coronas at a lovely cool temperature for when the day's boat work is complete!


The semi-transparent propane cylinder has been filled, the propane line is connected to the stove, which is installed in the galley. The replacement for the intake flapper valve arrived a week ago and Derek installed it and fixed the head -- it works beautifully now!
Last week, I stripped the paint off the center of the salon preparatory to Derek's doing the woodworking to convert to the "master cabin" layout.
This is it when it was not finished, but it shows the two colors that the teak had been painted. There was even wallpaper on the forward section. We were happy to find that the underlying wood was not horribly marred... it actually cleaned up better than this later. I used Citristrip, which is pleasant in that it smells like oranges and is safer than many other strippers, and works easily as long as you give it the full half hour to penetrate.


So, aside from this being Saturday so that I totally owe friends and family an update, we only have a few days left before we move aboard! This afternoon, Derek has very nearly finished the woodworking for our bunk... AWESOME. At the same time this afternoon, I was deployed to Lowe's to decipher the mystery of connecting the in-line tiny water heater to our freshwater system. Solved it, but it did take a while. Derek will do the actual install, but my puzzle-working was to save him hours of staring at plumbing (in three or four different non-compatible measurement systems) and getting really frustrated. Which is good, because he was reshaping the forward end of the salon into a working master bunk instead. Whee!

We will be moving aboard as soon as the plumbing is completed and the bunk woodworking is completed... we've had a bed-in-a-box 9" down-topped memory foam mattress for months, waiting for the bunk refit to be completed.

Last week, Derek also finished installing the big new solar panels, moving the old ones farther forward on the hard bimini top over the cockpit, so as to fit all of them up there. He finds that with the new panels added in, we could run the refrigerator indefinitely without being connected to shore power or running the engine. Here's the new panel on the port side (they are symmetrically distributed on either side of the main boom):


Incidentally, if you want to remember port and starboard, just think of this comedy routine from Ren Faire comedians Puke and Snot (the pirate sketch):
"Left: Port! Left: Port!"
"I'm with you, we should have left port an hour ago!"

Tomorrow, Derek will complete the stairs up to the bunk. I will experiment with soundproofing the engine compartments and complete Grant's headliner. What will still need doing? Some painting, wood refinishing, galley splash guard tiling, and the flooring, for sure! On Derek's side, some of the electrical stuff (like a new masthead light) will still be worked on after we move aboard, and the dinghy engine prepped for regular use. And we will end-o the boat at the dock in order to put the stainless protective strip on the starboard rub rail. But we are so close now, it's a bit scary!

Oh, yeah, on the 4th we took off the morning to see the Blue Angels do a "dress rehearsal" practice over NAS Pensacola:

They are closer -- and LOUDER -- than they look in this shot. Eh?