Window is in!

We finally glued the fixed piece of glass back in with some window glazing silicone caulk. Hopefully it will still be in place next weekend! 

We still need to caulk the weather stripping back on- we wanted to let the glazing cure first though. 

Window Removal

We finally got around to removing the broken sliding window. We've been putting it off as we were under the impression, from speaking with various people, that we'd have to pull out the entire window frame from the boat. 

We took out all the screws and were trying to find an appropriate tool to pry the frame loose when I noticed the weather stripping around the fixed piece of glass was removable. I pulled that off and realized there was basically caulk holding the piece in place. Once we popped that out, we just had to pull down the top center piece of track to get the sliding piece out. Easy peasy.  We're trying to source new fuzz lined track to replace that while we're at it. 

Hinky Dinkin'

Saturday we got the Hink back up and running. Matt took the alternator to a shop that said they could rebuild it but apparently that didn't work out as we ended up with a brand new one. It went on easily. If you've been reading this blog or are familiar with boats, you know "easy" boat projects are few and far between! 

Emboldened by success with the alternator, we finally installed the swimstep we'd bought the same day we bought the boat. While not quite as easy peasy as installing the alternator, it wasn't bad as far as boat projects go. 

Then it was time to go for a ride! You might think that after the easy time we had with the two projects that something would go wrong. Nope! The worst thing that happened was I had a margarita with lunch and it was awful. We were out a little over three hours and the boat ran great. The alternator was recharging the battery just fine. All in all a great day! 

Also we got our subwoofer back (on Pineapple Girl). We got a surround sound system last December and have not had much luck with the sub woofer. The original one went out and the place we bought it gave us a new one. That one went out and the place we bought it directed us to the manufacturer. The manufacturer had us ship it to So Cal for warranty service. 

Two weeks after we shipped it, Matt called for a status update. The person he spoke with refused to look up the status and said parts were on order and it would be two more weeks. It showed up on our doorstep the next day!  Per the invoice, a defective amp was replaced. It works great and our fingers are crossed that it will keep working this time!! Sure don't want to have to use the warranty shop again. 

Labor Day Weekend

We spent Labor Day weekend on an Ox Bow Cruise Out at Decker Island, a spot called Horseshoe Bend that is just off the Sacramento River. We were all sterned into the island, at a spot with a nice beach at low tide. The current was ripping through pretty hard, which led to our first broken glass of the weekend....

We were coming in to side tie alongside a boat with higher freeboard than we have. The current pushed us into them pretty hard and with the height difference, their gunwale (the upper edge of the side of their boat) was in the middle of our stanchions (the stainless posts that hold up our handrail). The current was pushing us against them so hard that the stanchions were bending in. I was pushing against them, trying to create some space so we could pull forward and get off of them. I could not get us off them so Matt ran down from the helm.

We were both pushing as hard as we could when I heard a CRACK. My first thought was the teak handrail had broken. That would truly be a catastrophe as the railing is a work of art. I couldn't see the wood because it the cover was on it. I had kind of a sick feeling of dread... Then I heard Matt behind me cussing and turned to find the cracking sound was actually the window cracking from where Matt had braced himself to push off the other boat. It was the sliding part of the window and we should be able to replace it for around $60. Plus all the time it is going to take us to remove and reinstall the entire window :rolleyes:

Also broken over the weekend: one clock and one champagne glass. Turns out glass is a modern third anniversary gift. Guess Pineapple Girl was mad we didn't bring her anything?

In three years we have put 286.6 hours on the port engine, 282.2 on the starboard (probably really closer to equal to the port as we had a time the starboard hour meter wasn't working) and 88.2 hour on the generator. We've put in 902.6 gallons of diesel at a total price of $3477.26. For all the fun we've had, it's "a bargain at any price."

Private Island?!?

We had the pleasure of visiting Delta Yacht Club this past weekend. This is a beautiful private island just off the San Joaquin River not too far from Stockton. They were having an Open House and membership drive. They fed us dinner and let us spend the night on their dock. Their members are allowed unlimited use if the island and it's facilities. Let me tell you, I'm very tempted to join. It's not cheap... We're giving some serious thought to how much we'd use it.

Sunday morning we were waiting for a favorable current before we left so we worked on our to do list. Awhile back we bought one set of hinges to try on one if the engine room hatches. They were a bit difficult to install but it looks like they will work out well.

Wildcat!

No not kaepernick's offense (go Niners!). We got our new wildcat from Ideal Windlass today. The current wildcat is not the correct one for our rode so it had issues raising our anchor. We sent Ideal a chain sample so this wildcat should be correct. Hopefully we will be able to install it next weekend! We are going to Stockton for fuel but should have time for a project as well. Though we aren't really sure how to get the windlass apart!? Just makes things interesting. ;)

I Say Boom Chicka Boom

We are going to a crab feed at Ox Bow tonight and had planned to go by boat and spend the night at the guest dock. Instead we will go by car as we decided to work on projects and we have the boat a little torn up.

We have our new antenna installed and are working on wiring up the new speakers.

Boom chicka rocka chicka rocka chicka boom!!

Goodbye 2012… Hello 2013

We spent the final weekend of 2012 and welcomed in 2013 at South Beach Harbor in San Francisco. We had a beautiful trip up there from Coyote Point on Saturday the 29th. It was sunny, not too cold and not too windy. Surprisingly, we only saw two other boats the whole way (about two hours in the south bay, south of the Bay Bridge). This is not counting all the container ships anchored in the general anchorage, there were plenty of those.

Once we arrived, we decided we could check in on Sunday and we didn’t even go ashore for probably twenty hours, just hung out on the boat. We had some clam chowder for Saturday dinner and bacon and eggs for Sunday breakfast so we were all set. We enjoyed watching a DVD on Matt’s new TV with his new Blue Ray player—he got a home theater set up for Christmas! We have yet to install the speakers but we’ve started planning where to put them. The saloon TV is now permanently mounted via what was designed as a ceiling mount—though we flipped it upside down and installed it to the flat surface next to the steps down to our cabin. The old TV is now the aft cabin TV, though it is not (yet) mounted and still must be laid flat on the berth when we are underway (just in case!!).

Sunday after the aforementioned bacon and eggs, we headed ashore to check in and to find a place to watch the Forty Niners game, as unfortunately the Fox station was not coming in. We ended up at the Public House. It on the ground floor of Pac Bell Park, the SF Giants stadium. They have a great TV set up and the servers were nice. The nachos were excellent. We were camped out there for probably a good four hours. We went back to the boat after the Niners game and were able to catch the late game on the boat as THAT channel came in great.

We were expecting two other boats Monday, though actually one had arrived Sunday while we were at the Public House and we didn’t realize until we saw them on the dock Monday as we headed up for breakfast at the Java House www.javahousesf.com. They joined us and we all enjoyed a delicious (and fast) breakfast. Then they headed off to the Ferry Building and we went back to the boat to await our fabulous canvas artist, Keith McElroy. I was expecting him to just drop off our new items and be quickly on his way, but he actually had to do the final fitting of our new fender storage screens for the back of our flybridge. We’d been tying the fenders there and someone on Trawler Forum mentioned making fender bags so I decided to ask Keith to make some sort of storage solution for us. We know how creative he is so our only requirements were that the fenders not need to be tied to the rail and be covered as much as possible. What he created is above and beyond anything we could have imagined. You would never even know there are fenders in there. I will have to add a photo later.

Around the time Keith arrived, our other friends got there on their boat. After having Keith look at their boat and talk about their canvas needs, they walked down to the Ferry Building with us where we did a little shopping and celebrating. Once we got back to the boats it was time to start figuring out the timing for dinner. We started out with drinks and appetizers on one boat and ended up with dinner and fireworks (courtesy of the city of San Francisco) on our boat. We had tons of fantastic food and the fireworks show was fabulous!

Tuesday morning dawned cold and clear to ring in 2013. We headed out for Willow Berm around 10:30, expecting around a six hour trip. We actually got more current by leaving a little later but even with that it was not a really strong push. The ride was mostly uneventful expect for a couple of the very few boats we saw seemed bound and determined to run into us. The first one was just south of the Richmond San Rafael bridge. There were three boats heading south towards us from the other side of the bridge. Two of them seemed to be travelling together but they split up as they got to the bridge and I swear the one set his course straight for us. We’d veer a little to our left, he’d veer a little to his right so we were still head on, we’d veer right, he’d veer left, ETC. REALLY??? Finally I asked Matt to please make a decisive large turn one way or another because I did not trust this guy. So we made a BIG left turn then straightened back up to head for the bridge… and HE TURNED TOWARDS US AGAIN!! Then turned back to where he’d been heading before… ??? we eventually passed about 150’ apart, starboard to starboard. He was steering from his pilot house, in his shirtsleeves with his cup of coffee. Didn’t even get a wave out of him. At that point we were on our flybridge in multiple layers of clothing, pretending we weren’t freezing. We moved down below shortly after this incident and steered from below the rest of the way, until we docked at Willow Berm.

Our next interesting boat meeting experience was just after we turned onto New York Slough at Pittsburg. One entrance to Pittsburg Marina is on the right shortly after this turn. There were two boats heading towards us after we turned. One was clearly going to the marina. The other was well to the other side of the slough and off to our left and I figured he was continuing on. I was a little unsure of his intentions though so I slowed down. Glad I did because he suddenly made a sharp left and cut right in front of us. I swear it felt like he was less than a hundred feet in front of us!! I made a hard left as well to avoid him and Matt laid on our horn. Matt does not think the guy even saw us. The boat then proceeded to cut off the other boat that was also headed into the marina. I don’t know if the skipper was drunk, blind, hung over, stupid, and/or oblivious??? Luckily that was it for the collision avoidance type entertainment for the day.

We were almost to the Antioch Bridge when someone started hailing “anyone” on channel 16. Something along the lines of “this is Master Baitor, does anyone copy?” Finally the Coast Guard responded. He told the Coast Guard responder that he was trying to find the Pittsburg Marina and couldn’t locate it. We seriously did not thingkthe Coast Guard would respond to that. The original responder from San Francisco must have made a quick call as someone from Coast Guard Station Rio Vista then got on and asked the guy to switch and answer on 21 Alpha. To which this ace skipper responded “10-4 good buddy”. Not wanted to miss any of the fun of THIS, we switched to 21A to continue following this saga. Rio Vista was hailing for “person looking for Pittsburg Marina” and getting no response. We switched back to 16 and soon heard the Coast Guard trying again on that channel. Sure enough, our lost skipper was still there. Guess he had no idea what it meant to switch channels?? Surprised he even knew how to use the VHF. He commenced to complain to the Coast Guard how hard the marina was to find and how well hidden it was. Unfortunately they gave him the phone number to the station and asked him to call in so we didn’t get to find out if he managed to find the marina. Again not sure if the skipper was drunk, blind, hung over, stupid, and/or oblivious??? Did he BRING charts with him? Hell we could find the marina with the $10.00 Navionics app on the iPhone.

We saw a few more boats after we passed under the Antioch Bridge but luckily they all stayed a safe distance away! Sunset was just before 5 and luckily the twilight lingered long enough to give us a bit of light as we pulled into our slip around 5:30. Our neighbors on the end tie were in their saloon watching something on their positively humongous TV (which goes well on their 58’ boat) but Steven still came out and helped us tie up. He always does when he is there, which is so nice of him! We managed to arrive at not only almost exactly dark but it also seemed to be almost exactly slack water so we were able to pull in and get tied up without incident. However we had discovered some water on the floor in the aft cabin and couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. We’d wiped it up and had it reappear three times on the trip back. We asked Steven to check the boat this morning and see if that spot was wet again. He reported it was dry so we will have a mystery to investigate when we are back. Its always something, after all.

So 1600 words and I haven’t even told you that we installed two small LED lights in the ceiling of the aft cabin and finished sealing all the cracks in the shower floor! I’ll have to take a bunch more pictures as all I have is Matt installing lights and something to show you the chop by the Naval Weapons station in Concord.

Two Coats

Done? Maybe. Maybe one more once we're back in our regular (covered) slip.

So Worth It!

So here we are Christmas morning, putting a second coat of floor finish down. The first coat looked fantastic and we are thrilled that all the prep is paying off. I didn't take a photo until after we'd scuffed it in preparation for the second coat. So one picture is scuffed first coat and the other is freshly applied second coat. The satin finish is really nice and looks great with the walls. Happy day for sure!!!

Can it be?

Yesterday we applied an oil "sealer" that really brought out the color of the wood. Today we are applying the first coat of finish!!!

Sanding

Guess what I'm doing? No, BESIDES blogging... YES, sanding. Still working on the edges with 80 grit. Will we ever be done prepping? At this point, I think the answer is "no". Sigh.

Ten Days 'til Christmas

So here we are, ten days before Christmas. Are we at the mall finishing our Christmas shopping? Of course not. We are on the boat finishing our floors. Ok, not (re) finishing yet. Still preping. Matt is optimistic we will finish this weekend. I'm less optimistic. We shall see.

Stripping!

So after a pretty full day yesterday of sanding the sole in the saloon, we had removed the finish from about two thirds of the floor and we were both exhausted. I only sanded for about an hour while Matt sanded for several hours but even just that hour left my arms feeling like spaghetti. I bought some "environmentally friendly" stripper and we tried it in a small corner. It didn't get all the finish up but today Matt was able to easily sand the remaining finish off. So we decided that I'd apply the stripper in the vee berth and galley while Matt continued sanding in the saloon.

It's been about 45 minutes since I finished applying the product. All Matt has left to sand in the saloon is the edges. I'll start scraping the forward area in a few minutes and we plan to sand it next weekend when it is totally dry. We plan to leave in about an hour so we can be home for the Forty Niners game.

Hopefully we will be able to apply the first coats of finish next weekend.

Oops we just discovered we don't have the proper grit sandpaper for the edging attachment on the Festool so we will have to finish up the saloon next weekend as well. Just the edges shouldn't take TOO long. Famous last words, right?

Projects!

We currently have the boat at our old marina, all the better to knock out a couple of projects. We're having a little canvas work done by Keith McElroy, refinishing the sole (aka floor) and doing some work on the shower floor where water was seeping into places it shouldn't be seeping.

So far in the shower, I have pulled out all the teak from around the base of the shower walls and found a few soft spits. We are still debating next steps but it needs to dry out anyway.

Meanwhile Matt has been sanding off the old finish of the cabin sole in the saloon. I did some when he went to get us lunch. It is kind of a workout and the vibration is a bit tiring. I just went to OSH and purchased some "environmentally friendly" wood stripper to try out as well. One nice thing with the sander is it is almost dust free. Pretty amazing-German engineering at its finest. It is called a Festool and Matt borrowed it from work.

Keith measured for our projects earlier this week and will have everything done before we head back to the delta in early January.

Back to the Boat!

Matt and I are so ready to go to the boat tomorrow after work! We didn't go last weekend as I was in Hong Kong for work. Matt's brother Mark stayed on our boat with his family and they had such a good time they are going to take their boat up next summer for a cruise.

Last time we were up there was July 21st and 22nd for a work weekend.

I don't think I blogged that Friday the 13th we were at Coyote Point for a Bon Voyage party for Tiki J, the boat we sailed to Hawaii in 2010. Our former boat partners kept the boat and they went this year with a bunch of top notch sailors, namely our former partner Kim and her two brothers. They also let Kim's husband come along. :) just joking Scott. Plus two other crew. They were fourth in their division, as we were in 10. I figured they'd win with the hot crew they had aboard but i think conditions out there were tough this year with an abnormal wind pattern. Once was enough for me doing that trip; I'd rather take my vacation anchored out in the Delta! But to each his own... lots of people do the Pac Cup every time (every two years).

So back to our project weekend last trip to the boat. Two (of four) of our engine room lights had stopped working. We'd tried new bulbs with no success so we bought two new lights. Luckily one light just needed the wires tightened but we did have to replace the other one. It is MUCH more pleasant down there with light!

We also replaced the shaft packing on the port shaft. That is one of those frustrating projects that causes crankiness on my part so Matt mostly worked on it by himself. Luckily we started off with the correct size shaft packing this time, thanks to the helpful young man at West Marine. The size I'd written in our log (see photo) did NOT look right once we picked up the package so the clerk looked up our previous purchases and helped us get the correct size, smaller than what I'd written down! I ran to the grocery store while Matt started on the project and he found we were missing a necessary wrench. Luckily I was right by the Ace Hardware in Rio Vista so I popped in to get one. I was measuring how far it opened by using my iPhone screen to gauge it, then texted Matt to ask how big it had to open. He gave me a measurement in inches so I asked the clerk for a tape measure and measured my phone, then told the clerk that the wrench would work. He looked at me like I had three heads and asked what I planned to do to my iPhone with a wrench. LOL.

So once I got back with the wrench Matt was able to get the gland apart and get the old packing out. There are normally three rings of packing and one ring was pretty much loose and was exposed as soon as he loosened the gland. He then started digging around with whatever sharp pointy things we could find to try to get the next ring out. At first he didn't think there was one and he asked me to try. I agreed it didn't FEEL like there was one, but logic dictated that there was and Matt finally got it out. Obviously this is not something one can see into. At all. Even with trying to take photos of it. This is where my crankiness starts to rev up. We gave up on trying to dig out a third ring and figured replacing two was good enough. Matt then cut the two new rings, stuffed them in there and retightened the gland.

In case you are wondering what this thing is and why we had to replace the packing, aka stuffing... So in layman's terms I shall attempt to explain. As I have only a layman's understanding, hopefully this isn't too far off. So the transmission drives a shaft that spins the propellor. There is a "gland" along this apparatus where I think the two are joined and there is friction there between the spinning shaft and the not spinning pieces from the transmission. Or something. That's not spinning. But anyway, friction causes wear and heat. So the shaft packing is this greasy material stuff that is kind of squared off and is 1/4" (in our case) on each side. It helps with the friction and the whole thing is cooled by water that comes in through the hull where the shaft goes out from the engine room to the propellor. The nuts of the packing gland have to be adjusted such that a little but of water gets in to keep things cool but not so much that the boat is in danger of sinking. When you get to the point you can no longer adjust the gland properly or you start hearing funny noises, it's time for new packing. We got to the funny noises part... We'll find out Saturday if the new packing took care of the issue!
What happened was we were leaving the marina to get fuel at Village West on July 7th. We were passing a boat on the guest dock and we wondered what kind of power tool they were using that was making the high whining noise we were hearing. Except we kept hearing the noise just as loud after we passed the boat. We finally realized that OUR boat was making the noise and we tracked it down to the port shaft when we put the motor in neutral and the prop stopped spinning. We idled in the Mokelumne for awhile as we assesses whether to continue or turn back. We'd already previously realized we needed to change the packing as it was dripping too much. After a quick call to a very knowledgable friend we decided to continue. The noise was gone by the time we got to Village West, before we even changed the packing but we still needed to do the project. Hopefully the noise won't be back on Saturday!
After that project we started in on setting up a shelf in the storage area in the galley to the port side of the sink. There is a very large space under the counter but it is too deep to get much practical use out of. We put shelf supports fore and aft and plan to use some wire closet shelving material to span the space and provide more practical storage. I'll post a photo when we have it done.
After that it was all about cleaning and organizing so our guests would have room when they came up. We use our vee berth for storage so we had to clean it all out for Mark's girls. It was amazing what all we had in there and we were exhausted (not to mention hot and sweaty) by the time we were done.
This weekend we hope to be at a Willow Berm in time to see Vicky's son's concert. Vicky is the harbor master and her son is a guitarist/ singer who has been making his way in Hollywood and is visiting home for awhile. Then Saturday we are taking the boat to Ox Bow marina to go to a luau at the Yacht Club. We are thinking of joining so we can go cruising with them. They have a lot of members from Willow Berm, many of whom are on our dock! Should be a fun time Saturday night.