December - Brrrrrr

Happy Holidays!

We got our gift early.
WE ARE OUT OF THE TENT!!

We're coming out! We want the world to know...

It almost feels like we have graduated and moved on to middle school. Now that she is in full day light the paint job on the boat looks even better though that hardly seems possible. She does look lovely.

Being out in the yard means we have slightly less power than we did before. We still need to install our solar panels and wind generator. Until then we are using a 15 amp outlet. Getting more like a boat :-)

We can squeeze in here, if we just move that power outlet a little

Weather wise, it is proving to be a year of extremes. After a hot summer we are also sharing the early cold and snow that seems to be affecting many places.

Starting to snow.....followed by freezing rain

We recently wrote to family:
"Snow most of today, melting stuff the rest of it. Tomorrow does not get above freezing. And high winds. The inside of the boat is dripping all over everywhere. Chris just crawled through a puddle. Whoever says boat life is not fun just does not know what they are talking about."

In hindsight we realized that we really did not accomplish much through the winter season last year. Many of the jobs that needed doing on the boat simply could not be done in such cold temperatures. So we have decided that we will take the opportunity to make some long overdue visits to people we love and who we haven't seen for way to long.

Watch this space!

The varnish goes on..and on...and on...

Between other jobs we have been varnishing the interior of the boat. It has taken the best part of the year, and it's not done yet. Apart from the main salon there is not a huge sense of urgency. It's just another one of those jobs that is way easier to do now than later. Living in the boat at the same time doesn't help. Things get moved, lost, misplaced and found again. The main salon area got done last spring while we were house sitting for friends. That was easy. We were off the boat and could strip things down and leave them lying around without having to clamber over everything. Once we got back on the boat we sanded and varnished the main part of both hulls: the nav(igation) station and the galley.

                  

Nav. Station during

 Nav. Station after

The shelves in both areas looked like they had spent all their lives in a builder's workshop. Scratched, scraped, mounds of dried epoxy, glue, unknown icky things were smeared and bonded to them. Lots of high intensity sanding, then varnishing, turned them into lovely pieces of wood that should be on display instead of hiding behind doors. The public sides of the nav. station and galley had the same treatment, with the galley getting a new stove and counter tops as well! The old stove worked, in a fashion, but we could not use the oven. The new stove has a working oven AND grill (!), with a nifty oven door that tucks under the body of the stove when you open it. Our fuel is propane.

   

 Space left by the old stove

 

 New stove, still with it's protective plastic cover

 

 The door tucks under the oven when open

 

 It even provides a romantic ambiance!

 

 Cupboards during

 Cupboards after (though we still need to find the door hinges!)

Late summer brought another sister ship into Deltaville. George and Doris of sv Grace
got hauled out in a neighbouring boatyard to replace their rigging and a few other jobs. We met George and Doris last year and liked them right away so we were happy to get a chance to spend some time with them. Their boat is two hull numbers away from ours so for a brief time there were 3 Prout Snowgoose 37s in Deltaville, with only 10 hull numbers between them. A historic event! George and Doris have some amazingly inventive ideas for their boat, and she looks wonderful.

sv Grace

There is another Prout sharing the yard with George and Doris, but a 34 foot. She belongs to Michael, who single hands down to the Bahamas every winter, and lives on his boat at anchor here in Deltaville the balance of the time. Michael is in his ealy 80s! A survivor of childhood polio Michael is living proof that attitude and outlook help to keep you enjoying life. While here Michael hosts weekly sessions for interested cruisers on routes to the Bahamas, best anchorages, check-in and -out requirements and anything else you wish to know. A super nice guy.

The car is just about hanging in there. We now have to keep one of the fuses out permanently, which means no interior lighting or opening windows. The air stopped working a couple of years ago. It's fine now that it's colder here, but it was pretty brutal in the hot weather. Just a little longer, little car..

A hot summer!

All the eastern coast of North America, as well as a great portion of other parts of the world, experienced an exceptionally hot summer. We carried on working on the boat, but at the speed of spreading molasses - slowly.

Summer brought friends and familiar faces.

In June sister boat Polar Pacer with Tom and Chris aboard arrived at Schroeder's Yacht Sytems boatyard with a list of work they wanted to do. We had met Chris and Tom soon after they bought their boat in Port Credit, Ontario and it was great to see them again and the changes they have made to their boat. They each have special talents and make difficult tasks seem easy. They worked through their long list of jobs with a speed and efficiency that make us look like we are standing still. For a look at what they have done see their blog.   [I took several shots of Polar Pacer to insert here and they have disappeared - nowhere to be found]

The semi-annual trip home was wonderful as we got together with family and saw good friends we hadn't seen for years. But it was hard on our aging car. The brakes failed completely while we were up north and Chris ended up having to put in a new brake line after finding the original one corroded through. On our return trip we had to stop part way when metal against metal turned out to be lifetime sealed units reaching the end of their lifetime. And almost as soon as we drove back into the boat yard our front wheel bearing let us know that it's time had come. Doing the work we are doing here it is necessary to have a vehicle and we need to baby ours until it can finally retire. It certainly doesn't owe us anything, but we need her to last just that little bit longer. Bobby the boatyard's mechanic generously gave of his spare time to replace the bearing, not once but twice, as the first bearing we bought turned out to be the wrong one. It was super nice of him!

Replacing the bearing - advice at the ready

One of our projects is tearing out the built-in fridge and replacing it with a stand-alone Engel freezer. Engel units have a great reputation, popular with long distance truck drivers, RV-ers and boaters, among others. They take very little power once having reached temperature, which is a huge plus. Our unit can be either a fridge OR a freezer, but there are units which have both in one. Our original refrigeration system consisted of two boxes, one smaller than the other. The larger one also had a very small freezer section (think two boxes of spinach) and it was all run by a compressor which had taken up residence (and most of the space) in the top of an adjoining cupboard. The original cold boxes had perished and HAD to come out so it seemed a good time to rethink the whole food storage thing.

Original cold boxes. The compressor was in a cupboard to the left front of the picture.

The small freezer compartment was in the top back of the larger compartment 

We were amazed at the amount of insulation surrounding the original boxes. In fact, the entire section of hull surrounding the fridge was filled with foam insulation and we probably took out at least 12 large black garbage bags full of foam. A fun job completed with the help of 2 bread knives (the first one broke), a grapefruit knife, scraper, a pry bar,and other assorted tools. Once the foam was all out we insulated the sides of the hull with cork sheet and installed the supports for a slide-out tray that will hold the freezer in place.

 Insulating foam remaining after cold boxes removed

 

Removing the foam

All the foam out

 Engel (in it's insulated bag) in position

Engel slid out on it's tray

Our plan is to use the Engel as a freezer most of the time. If we need a fridge we have an Engel cooler, which we can keep cool by taking blocks of ice out of the freezer. Well, that's the plan...

Late spring stroll

We are in the midst of a heat wave. Temperatures over 100 degrees during the day, with night time lows of 83!!

I am wistfully casting my mind back to spring and the mild climates, so I am posting photos from a typical evening walk. Most pictures were taken the same evening, though a couple were snapped a few days later.

StingrayPoint

                                                                

                                                                  

We try and take a walk most evenings to get rid of the cobwebs and have a change of view from the inside or outside of  a boat. The red line (clicking on the picture above will enlarge it) shows where we generally go, starting at the white covered building on the left where our boat is kept, out of the boatyard and through Stingray Point Marina. Then we head north to the mouth of the Rappahannock, right towards the end of Stingray Point and Chesapeake Bay, circling around to rejoin our track and retrace our steps.

Stingray Point got it's name from Captain John Smith (the same John Smith reputedly "saved" from death by Pocahontas ). He was fishing here with his men when he was struck by the tail of a stingray and became gravely ill. In fact, he had already picked out the spot where his men were to bury him (many say it was Gwynns Island to the south), but he was helped by Indians who cured him with potions from a creek later to be known as Antipoison creek. Smith's recovery was so quick he was apparently able to eat the stingray for supper!

In those days Stingray Point extended much further into the Bay. Wind and waves take their toll - in the 1930s a hurricane removed almost half of it.

                         Past the workshop where the guys and gals relax after a long day

          At the marina, there is an osprey on top of a mast....

.........and a green heron by the dock.

Through Stingray Point Marina's avenue of Bradford Pear trees in bloom

A cardinal (Virginia's State bird) and a bluebird stay still long enough for us to use the camera

Froths of azaleas...











                                 ...like ripe berries and cream
                         

Wild turkeys visiting the back garden

A carpet of flowers surrounding a cactus garden

One of the ever present deer

A blue grosbeak

Can never resist the bluebirds

A large dead sea turtle. We couldn't see any obvious cause of death but have been told that crabbers often kill them as the turtles go after the bait in the crab pots.

Roses!

...............and heading back home.

Anodizing recap

Windows to Date

It was pointed out by our fan that there has been only one blog entry to date this year. I knew that was not true - until I went and checked. It is true - just one entry.
I guess I've been waiting until I have a finished project to write about, but as that doesn't seem to be imminent I shall try and summarize some of what we have done to date.
I'm sure what we've done can be done in any number of different ways and we may not have even chosen the best way, but we've done the best we could with what we know and what we have.

Today I'll write about our windows. Our original windows, and I think they were original to the boat, were in a bad way. The front ones had gone so milky from the sun that they were impossible to see through, night or day. Some of the side windows were cracked and the previous owner had stuck a license decal over the crack. We heard later from Homeland Security that you should not stick decals onto your acrylic windows as it will actually cause them to crack. All of our windows leaked. The interior wooden frames were in bad shape with the varnish blistered, peeling and yellowed from both water and sun damage, and the joints were so flimsy as to make them almost fall apart.

We removed all our windows. We think the front ones were of Lexan, which is much stronger than acrylic but less UV resistant. One of the pluses is that it flexes rather than cracks if it is hit. The downside of this is that the flexing can break the seals around the edge of the window and allow water in. Not only does excessive sunlight lead to the windows becoming opaque and milky, it also decreases the strength. Because of this we decided to replace the front windows with acrylic, as well as the side windows. We chose 1/2 inch acrylic for the front windows, 3/8 inch acrylic for the side windows.
We slightly changed the original design of the side windows, splitting the original long piece of acrylic into three shorter pieces. We hope that this will help in preventing leaks as there is less likelihood of shorter pieces flexing out of sync with the body of the boat than there is for a longer piece. And the bonus is that it was much more economical!

The long window has been split into three

We bought the acrylic in sheets and Chris cut them to size. He used a router to round the edges and countersank the screw holes. We bought stainless screws, with black heads to complement the dark gray acrylic. As the fiberglass sides of the boat vary in thickness each screw had to be fitted for length and then cut to size, timeconsuming and laborious but necessary as the inside wooden frames fit over the nuts at the end of the screws and have limited clearance.

Rounding the edges

The screws on the inside-individually measured and cut

To fit the windows on the outside we used a gasket of butyl rubber. Butyl rubber is our new best friend. It is cheap and works wonderfully. In addition to the gasket of butyl rubber we wrapped a bit of it around each screw as it went in and was secured by the nut. Once all the screws on a given window were in we tightened them slightly but not so much that we would squeeze all the butyl out. After they had "seasoned" for a bit Chris caulked all around the outer edges with Sikaflex 295 UV. They look amazing.

We can finally see out of our front windows!

Finished windows

We took all the window frames apart. At first they looked as though they would only be good for kindling, but we sanded them all down to the bare wood and they started to look pretty good. Then we varnished them and secured the joins and we now have some super-solid and very attractive frames (yet to be fitted!). I wish we had had the foresight to take a "before" photo.


Better than new frames


Hatches: We have two large (20" x 20") hatches in the cabin top as well as 4 smaller ones along each side of the cabin top/coamings and 2 small ones inside the cockpit well. As with most fittings on our 1985 boat it is hard to find the same ones to replace what we have, and if we can find them, the price tag is hefty. So in the end we compromised and bought two new stainless steel Bowmar hatches to replace the large ones, and 2 new hatches to replace the badly leaking ones in the cockpit well. The other small hatches had leaks that could be fixed by swapping handles/fittings with the hatches we had replaced. Chris made these old hatches look like new by cutting acrylic to replace all the crazed lights in them and at the same time fixed all the waterproofing problems. He sealed these with Sikaflex 295 UV as well, and each hatch was
tested for waterproofness before they were fitted.

New stainless steel hatch (covered in plastic while we work)



Old hatch with new acrylic

The area where some of the hatches had to fit was fiberglass with a balsa wood core. In these we trimmed the balsa back a bit and filled them with epoxy. This sealed and waterproofed the balsa edge. The hatches were seated with butyl rubber which we then caulked around to stop the rubber creeping.

We are in the midst of repainting the interior hatch surround a creamy white. Currently they are a yellow-cream which will not go with the cream headliner we are hoping to install. For the two large and new hatches we bought interior surrounds with integral sunshade/mosquito netting that slide across the opening. Very spiffy!


Hatch surround - top one freshly painted

January/February Round-Up (or, the months that nearly got away)

Ice forming in the briny water of the Chesapeake

Work has been very slow on the boat these last few weeks, mainly because of the weather.

Although sheltered from rain and snow, we do need slightly warmer temperatures than we have
been having in order to get any work done. Paint won't paint, caulk won't caulk, epoxy won't..well, poxy. It's just too darned cold!

Returning from Christmas in Canada we found ourselves enjoying more wintry weather in Virginia. We had snow and it stayed. There seemed to be a winter storm every second week. The creek froze over,with ice at 3 inches thick in places! (don't forget that there is salt in this water). Boats that were here couldn't get out. By late February the ice and snow were still here, albeit very patchily.And now, in the beginning of March, we have just had another snow storm with resulting school closures and dangerous roads.
It did all melt within a day or two and finally the spring bulbs are close to flowering and birds are singing. Yesterday two flocks of trumpeter swans flew overhead, going north for the summer.

Boat trying to break ice by dropping anchor- didn't succeed
(photo courtesy svTwoLoose)

Frozen solid - those aren't patches of water

In addition to playing havoc with our work schedule, the storms affected our internet and we have had a very patchy and interrupted service. Luckily we only lost power a couple of times so were able to stay cosy with the help of 3 fan heaters.

A couple of big jobs did get ticked off the list. The cold was a big help to Chris when he removed the toilet and all the associated hoses. Some of the hoses were so blocked up it was surprising anything got through them. Our head now actually smells....not at all! We have ordered a new loo and it arrived this week, so we can get to work replacing that.

The other completed job was the re-anodizing of our stanchion bases, hinges and cleats. The boat looks so pretty we hated putting the old pitted fixtures back on her, but the price of new ones was high. Chris got around that by re-anodizing them himself, and did a pretty good job. It was a learning experience but we are pleased with the result.

Hinges before and after re-anodizing

Cleats before and after re-anodizing

Right now we have the pleasure of house- and dog-sitting for two friends. It is giving us good internet and also allowing Chris to rip out parts of the boat's interior that would be way too difficult to do with us still living on it. He is removing lots and lots of redundant wiring and tracing and checking the wiring we do use. Also he is able to get at and varnish the area in the salon where the bed is - pretty impossible while we are using it.

We have acknowledged that there is no way we are going to be in a position to head south and be out of the hurricane belt before hurricane season starts. So we will be spending another summer in Deltaville with the earnest hope that we will be ready to move south the first of November.

One last casualty these last couple of months has been the loss of our camera. It has simply stopped working. We are planning on getting a replacement in a few weeks, but until then we are picture free.