Into the Yard

We took PG to the yard today. We've given them quite a list and hope to have her back in a few weeks. Matt took her to Pittsburg single handed and I met him there in the car. It was such a beautiful day I hated to miss the boat ride but we're glad we didn't drive two cars up Friday night. Traffic was horrible. 

Rainy Delta Weekend

We finally had another weekend at the boat after several weekends spent house hunting. Now that we're under contract we can get back to enjoying our weekends!  Ox Bow had a cruise out this weekend but we hadn't signed up since we didn't know what our plans would be, so we spent the weekend in our slip, listening to the pitter patter of rain on the metal shed roof. 

We also cleaned adhesive residue off one  side of Spirit. I'll have to take a photo as it's actually pretty amazing. We'd bought stick on patches to display the registration numbers. Unfortunately they didn't stick all that well and all the edges were peeled up. We finally got disgusted with them and peeled them completely off. And of course even though they didn't stick all that well, they left a big mess of adhesive residue! 

We weren't sure what to get the residue off with as we didn't want to harm the dinghy tubes. We ordered a new oar lock as we'd broken one quite some time ago. It came with a 1oz sample of some kind of "orange off" stuff and a little white scruby pad. I won't pretend it was "wipe on, wipe off"-we used the entire bottle and a bit of elbow grease- but it got every bit of residue off and the area we cleaned looks brand new. We'll definitely get more of the product to get the residue off the other side and clean the rest of the boat. Good stuff. 

Meanwhile I've researched the best way to apply the registration numbers and it looks like a stencil and a sharpie is the way to go! So once we have Spirit all cleaned up we'll use that method to reapply the numbers. We'll post photos of the process. Coming soon...

Happy New Year!

I can't believe I've been so bad about blogging lately!  We've been on several fun trips since I last posted, including spending two nights after Thanskgiving at our favorite anchorage with my mom and dad aboard. They really enjoyed all the birds and the dinghy ride to Rosa's for lunch. 

More recently, we spent a few days at the end of December through New Year's Day at the Willow Berm guest dock (yards from our slip) with a group of Ox Bow YC cruisers. As always with Ox Bow cruise outs, there were good times, great people and, of course, plenty to eat. We even got a bacon delivery one morning. Steve Hand cooks up great bacon! 

Today we are kicking back watching NFL playoffs until time to head to Ox Bow marina for a membership meeting. Earlier the TV in the aft cabin about fell over from a wake from a passing boat. It felt like we were in an earthquake. I don't understand why people have such a hard time with the concept of a no wake zone. No harm done though, Matt leapt up and grabbed the TV. We lay that one down when underway since it's not secured- maybe it's time to secure it!!   

I hope your 2014 is off to a fabulous start!  Go Niners! :)

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. 

Village West Cruise

Pineapple Girl has been at the mechanic's for the past three weeks, getting some routine maintenance done and having a few worn out thirty year old parts replaced. We left from there (Antioch) about two hours ago and are on our way to Village West Marina in Stockton for an Ox Bow Yacht Club Cruise. 

We are about to meet up with another OBYC member from Willow Berm to cruise the rest of the way with them. It was pretty foggy when we first started out and now it's just a bit hazy around the edges. 

The theme of the cruise is red neck yacht club so we're interested to see people's take on what constitutes a red neck. I certainly have my own notions after living in the south for many years. 

I wrote the above yesterday. Now it's Sunday and we're heading home. Yesterday was warm and calm. Today is windy! Windy! Super windy! We hung at the docks all morning waiting for the tide to come in so there was enough water for the bigger boats te get out. It's early afternoon now as we head down fourteen mile slough to the San Joaquin River. 

Yesterday was super fun. There were some great red necks and hillbillies. We had a fire going in a fire pit and people were telling funny stories about growing up Catholic and attending Catholic school and mass. Once the wind changed and smoke was blowing right at us, Matt and I called it a night. Our clothes from yesterday smell like wood smoke and bacon. Apparently bacon is a red neck favorite because we had a lot of it yesterday! Yum. 

We're at the tail end of the Ox Bw procession a we stopped at Village West's fuel dock for diesel.  People ahead if us were talking on the radio about a freighter. We can see it up ahead on the river. So looks like we will be passing it soon. (Opposite directions). That's always fun. 

Just heard the report that it's nice and windy at willow berm. Fun fun. Got a couple hours before we deal with that. 

Just passed it. Whew. 

Underway today

Last weekend we went to the cove and had it all to ourselves for a very pleasant overnight. Unfortunately the main fin came off my paddleboard- I must have lost it in the weeds. I've got a new one on order. 

We got to the boat late last night after dropping a car off at the mechanic's marina in Antioch. We put the new sliding window in place this morning but we forgot the glue / sealant to put the fixed piece back in.  We waited for the ebb tide in the early afternoon and now we are underway to Antioch to leave the boat at the mechanic then hop in the car to head to Pittsburg for dinner with some Trawler Forum friends. 

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.