Monday, January 24, 2011

First Club Cruise Out of the Year

Yesterday, Sunday January 23, 2011, was our first club cruise out of the year.  The first Saturday after the third Tuesday is our "Commodore's Ball" where we have our official "change of watch" from the old board to the new board, then the next day we cruise to a neighboring club for brunch and to hand out cruise awards from the prior year.  Matt woke up Saturday morning with not only the cough he'd had all week, but pink eye on top of it so he decided it would be better for him to skip the ball.  We headed down to the boat and got it cleaned up in preparation for the guests who were going on the cruise with us.  We also finally got the CF numbers off the bow (California registration number, no longer needed as we are now a Coast Guard documented vessel) and replaced them with a small pineapple on each side of the bow. 

I had promised the person in charge of the ball that I'd be there early to help him so I went up to the club around 4:30 and manned the sign in table and made sure everyone got their meal tickets.  We also had boutonnieres for the incoming board and their dates and for all the past commodores and their dates, so I worked with the club manager to make sure we got flowers on everyone.

The manager and I finally had most everyone checked in and the caterer was starting to serve so we headed upstairs.  A friend of ours was providing the entertainment with his jazz band and he'd convinced his daughter to come sing. Matt has known the father and daughter for years and I knew he'd want to say hello so I convinced him to come up for a bit.  I had told people he wasn't there because of his pink eye and when he walked up the stairs quite a few people noticed him, pointed and said "pink eye" all at once.  It was really quite funny.  He ended up staying for quite awhile, making sure not to touch anyone!

Sunday morning dawned bright and clear and we knew we were in for a glorious day.  We were supposed to have four guests and it had dwindled to one for various reasons.  We ended up consolidating with two other boats that had also seen their guest count dwindle and we ended up taking eight guests up and eleven back!  It was a beautiful January day and a great brunch.  What a way to kick off the 2011 cruising season!

Monday, January 17, 2011

New Shower Faucet and Sprayer

We forget to take our camera to the boat so we'll have to post pictures later.  One of the things we've wanted to do on the boat was change out the shower head (it is a handheld sprayer) and faucet (to go from two handles to one).  I ordered all the bits and pieces before Christmas and they have slowly trickled in.  We got the last piece, the shower head, last week.  We'd had the new faucet and mixer valve for a few weeks so we'd already been to OSH to by all the parts to hook it up, then decided to return all those parts and buy different parts at West Marine that we thought would work better with the plastic hoses we have.  All we needed was a hole saw.  The instructions said 2 1/2'" to 3 1/4 so we asked around the dock and came up with a 3" one we could borrow.  When we took apart the existing faucet we realized that due to the thickness of the wall we actually needed a 5" hole saw.  So again we asked around. And asked around. and then went to buy one.  We also realized that we needed some different sized connectors than what we had as the hose was smaller than we thought.  So off to West Marine and OSH again.  Return this, buy that...

Matt had to run over to a friend's house to borrow a driver for the hole saw since we bought the wrong one so I got the new sprayer installed while he was gone.  After some trial and error and confusion over the instructions (no words, just pictures) we got everything done and we turned the water pressure back on.... and water shot everywhere from our connections at the back of the valve.  It was 5pm Saturday and we were ready to give up and attack it again Sunday.  However one of our friends came over at just that point and he and Matt spent another hour trouble shooting.  They decided the Shur Flo connectors weren't compatible with the other connectors we were using and there was no way to get them to work.  So we came up with a Plan Q or whatever letter we were on at that point and made a list of what we needed at West Marine on Sunday. 

This meant we had no water pressure on the boat overnight.  I can't tell you how many times I walked up to the sink expecting it to work.  The worst was when I'd squirt soap on my hands and then try the faucet.  DANG IT, outside to the spigot to wash my hands, AGAIN.

So Sunday morning I headed off to West Marine for the 32nd time, list in hand.  Got all the pieces and parts and back to the boat.  The final assembly was really not too bad.  The existing water hoses were really hard to get on to the connector barbs but we found if we heated them with the blow dryer before inserting the barb they were much easier to put together.  The only negative was the new arrangement involved about ten hose clamps.  Those suckers are SHARP and Matt cut his fingers up on them.  But we did get it all together and NO LEAKS.  At least on the back side, inside the wall.  The old faucet was leaking into the storage area under the settee so we are really happy this new is LEAK FREE.  Now in the shower side... we had a couple of leaks where I hadn't tightened things enough and Matt was easily able to take care of those.  We couldn't get a small leak to stop where the handheld sprayer attached into the water saving thing, even with reapplication of plumbers tape.  We decided it was minor enough that we would "live with it."  It was so late by the time we got all this done that we have not actually TRIED it yet, but it sure LOOKS like an improvement! 

From there we got the dinghy out onto its trailer using our new hitch on Matt's new car, but that is a whole story onto itself!

Monday, January 10, 2011

Dinghy / Trawler / PGII??

In answer to a question in a comment:

Pineapple Girl II is the trawler, an Overseas PT 35.  This is the boat pictured in the upper left of the blog.  Here is a shot of the name on the transom and another of the sundeck as seen from the flybridge.



and the dinghy / dink / zodiac is a little inflatable boat with a hard bottom that we are lucky enough to have a trailer for so we can store it out of the water.  As soon as we get that hitch finished!  The hitch is installed, we just need the part with the actual ball on it.  We call the dinghy "Spirit" in honor of the friend that gave it to us.  Here is what it looks like when we are towing it behind Pineapple Girl II. We take the outboard motor off of it when we tow it.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Project Weekend

We had a great weekend of getting projects done on the boat.

The biggest project was the new VHF.  The new VHF integrates with the GPS and knows where we are, it shows the location of nearby boats with AIS transmitters.  It has a remote microphone option, which we got and installed on the flybridge.  It also hooks into our existing loudhailer and replaces the separate (semi-functioning) loud hailer controller.  The loudhailer is cool-it is a loud speaker at the front of the boat which also picks up and amplifies sounds up there.  So say you are trying to set the anchor or something, you can talk back and forth from the bow to the person on the VHF at either the lower or upper helm.  NICE. 

In order to install the new VHF, we had to take the old one down and wire up the new one, including wiring it to the loudhailer speaker and the GPS.  Of course this was a big production that involved taking down all sorts of panels and feeding wires and all sorts of fun stuff.  Installing the remote mic on the flybridge involved drilling a hole through the fiberglass, which is always kind of scary since there isn't really room to make mistakes!  While we were at it, Matt decided to change how the power worked and wire the VHF to the same switch as the GPS instead of the switch that controls all the other navigation and communication equipment.  That way if we want to listen to the VHF while we are sitting in port we won't have to power up all our nav equipment, like the radar.  We SHOULD be able to turn the radar off even when the power to it is on but the power button on it doesn't work! At least it is stuck on and not off! 

One thing we did find out is that the previous owner was correct in saying the GPS works, just the display doesn't work.  The instructions were simple enough that we were able to set the GPS to output in a format the VHF could understand without there being a display, and bingo, there was our position displayed on the VHF!  Nice.

Of course this project involved a few trips to the store.  We had to stop by West Marine on our way to the boat yesterday to pick up the radio and remote mic (mid day we had another West Marine trip for another project) then today we had to pick up some bits and pieces and ended up going to OSH, Home Depot and Radio Shack.  But we were able to find everything.  We still need to go to Tap plastics for a face plate to cover the fact that the hole for the previous VHF is wider than we need and we also are waiting on a flush mount kit to come into the local West Marine from one of their Florida stores.

The other project we did yesterday that required a West Marine run was replacing the flax packing in our stuffing box on our starboard prop shaft.  What in the blazes is that, you ask?  So the engine spins the propeller by spinning the shaft, which the propeller is attached to.  This generates heat.  The stuffing box helps keep the shaft cool by allowing sea water in (at least I think this is how it works, but anyway).  One adjusts a big nut on the shaft to control how much water is seeping in.  Ideally there should be no or very little water dripping out of the stuffing box while the boat is sitting in the slip.  Our stuffing box was dripping like mad and that little bit of water adds up to a lot of water in the bilge.  We tried adjusting it tighter with no success.  We prefer to keep the water on the OUTSIDE of the boat, so we decided it was time for some new packing.  The packing comes in all different sizes but lucky for us the previous owner had left us a package of 5/16 flax packing.  We had picked up a big box of it at West Marine the other day so we had PLENTY for our project.  We backed the nut all the way off and set about picking out the old, greasy, nasty, blackened packing.  It seemed a bit larger than the new stuff, but hey, maybe it was compressed, right?  So meanwhile the water is dripping in at a fairly fast pace and we really want to get the whole thing put back together ASAP.  It takes me some trial and error to get the new pieces of packing cut to the right length (you use three separate pieces, each wrapped around once) so good thing we had bought that great big box!  So we had all three pieces cut and Matt started to put them into the nut (I think it might be officially called a "gland" but whatever).  Not happening.  No way, no how.  Too big.  So we drove up to West Marine for the correct size packing!  It slipped right in and we got the thing all tightened back together.  It seems to not be dripping but we'll have to adjust it next time we go out--If it is too tight, not enough water gets in to cool the shaft and that causes something bad to happen.  I'm not really sure WHAT but anyway, you want it to be cool.  Lesson, just because it is on the boat does not mean it is the part we need.

Ok, what else, lets see, we put a new sprayer thing on the kitchen sink.  I am not sure what you call this.  All you do is unscrew the screen thing at the end of the faucet and screw this thing in instead.  It can either be a spray or a stream and it swivels.  Anyway, it is very handy to have since we do not have a pull out sprayer.

We also rerouted the cables from the TV antenna so we do not have to pull the cable from the aft cabin into the saloon.  There is now a splitter in the engine room and one cable still comes up in the aft cabin and another cable comes out the hole where there used to be some sort of phone/ DSL box.  We got a nice face plate for it, too.  This sounds really simple but there was some trial and error involving drilling holes in the back of the closet which did not work out at all.  What we ended up with worked out better anyhow so no worries there.  We also tried to replace the antenna (which is inside the front of the flybridge) with a new one I got the other day which has a longer range but we weren't able to disconnect the cable from the old one.  We will have to cut it but we wanted to have an end to put on it first so we could hook it to the new antenna.  We got some ends at OSH so we can take care of that next weekend.  I spent quite a bit of time inside the flybridge front working on taking the thing apart.  It is a very large space but I have to crawl through kind of a small door to get in there.  Not super fun but you do what you have to do.  At least there is access!

Next weekend we hope to finish up the VHF installation and the new TV antenna, plus complete our shower project--a new faucet and hand held shower head!  We are waiting on the shower head, hopefully it will come this week.  We THINK we have all the other pieces and parts we need.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

New Years in Sausalito

We headed up to Schoonmakers Marina in Sausalito on Friday the 31st for New Years.  On the way up I made a Chipotle Remoulade sauce and got the flank steak marinated with rosemary and garlic.  When we got up there we headed toward our assigned slip.  It looked REALLY small and it was really tight as it was way down to the end of the fairway, a fairway that got narrower and narrower towards the end.  I was seriously afraid we were wider than the slip.  Let's just say we didn't have to worry about which side of the boat we wanted to get on and off the boat from!  Anyway, we headed up to the harbormaster to check in, then went to Le Garage for a late lunch.  Le Garage makes good food but the service is a little on the Slooooooow side.  Matt says it is just like really being in France. After lunch we walked the docks for awhile and checked out all the nice boats up there, then headed back to Pineapple Girl II relax for awhile before making dinner.  We had crab cakes with the remoulade sauce made earlier and then grilled up the flank steak.  We watched "PS I Love You" and were in bed before ten.  Happy New Year!

Saturday we slept in, then made bacon and eggs.  It was raining but we set off for West Marine and picked up a few items we needed for projects.  Then we tried to find somewhere for lunch but the two restaurants near West Marine were closed.  We picked up twice baked potatoes at Molly Stones then went back to the boat and ate them with left over flank steak and remoulade sauce on french rolls.  We didn't have enough pieces and parts to finish our many projects, though we were able to install a soap dispenser in the counter by the galley sink.  Later we headed over to the Sausalito Cruising Club to warm up and we had a few drinks.  They convinced us to stay for the buffet dinner and we watched a steady stream of ladies come in.  The bartender had told us that they were having a band that night that had a bit of an "alternative" following.  Being from the Bay Area, lesbians don't seem all that alternative but I guess he wanted to let us know in case that would make us uncomfortable.  We didn't last long enough for the band to come on.  We went back to the boat and watched two episodes of Saving the Bay.

Sunday we decided to walk down to the Sausalito Yacht Club for brunch.  It was really good, particularly Matt's Fried Egg BLT on croissant.  On the way back we stopped at Paradise Bay restaurant for a drink so we could use the bathroom and while we were there we noticed they had the 49ers game on and we ended up staying until the end of the game.  The niners finally won one!  We went back to the boat afterwards and grilled some chicken breasts we'd been marinating in a Tequila concoction (a Barefoot Contessa recipe).  We watched "The Changeling."

Monday dawned bright and cold.  We made bacon and eggs with biscuits and headed for home.  We had a great trip back after a lovely weekend.  When we got back to Coyote Point we got some diesel and pumped out the holding tank, then headed to our slip.  Gotta love this yachting stuff.