We seem to have two boat work seasons – our spring stop in Deltaville and our pre-cruise prep season. That’s the chaos we found ourselves in right up until departure.
One of our ongoing projects has been dubbed “the Windara weight loss program,” wherein we attempt to figure out what the previous owners left us that’s useful and what amounts to a hoarding situation. Without exaggeration, we’ve removed a couple hundred pounds of stuff that’s expired, outdated, beyond its useful life, redundant or otherwise unusable… and I’m certain we’ve got a couple hundred more to go.
Related to the weight loss program is the ongoing quest to reorganize the boat. We moved onto Windara in a single day and things got put “wherever” and have mostly stayed there. When we had Silent Sky, we removed everything when we winterized and used it as an opportunity to weed things out. And when we reloaded her in the spring, we both weeded out more stuff and reconsidered where things got stored. Since we live on Windara full-time, we don’t have the “luxury” of removing everything on a yearly basis, so reorganizing and removing things requires a conscious effort.
While we’re reorganizing, I’m doing my best to take the opportunity to give her a deep cleaning. We do our best to keep up with keeping her clean as we travel, but it’s not easy to work all week, travel all weekend, and then find time to deep clean as we go.
In addition to cleaning and organizing, we had some major projects to address, including replacing our main refrigerator, which died in the spring, and replacing the last of the hatches up forward that no longer properly closed (because the latches came off).
While we were in Hopetown, our watermaker failed. Between conversations with Jamie and doing some digging on our own, we were able to identify the clark pump as the culprit – likely some internal scoring. We had that sent off and rebuilt, and it lead us on a whole long adventure of identifying missing o-rings, bad fittings, and bent j-tubes. Given that we’d not pickled it, we also replaced the membrane, however it turns out we were sent the wrong one. Chris spent tons of time on the phone with JT at Halden Marine who helped him diagnose the problem and got us parts quickly. He’s sending us a new membrane too, and we’re hoping that’s the final piece of the puzzle.
Our final major project was to upgrade our solar. We hired someone for this one, but it was still a pretty major undertaking. We went from 325 Watts of solar to 830, and the new panels are HUGE. We needed to have a custom frame built, and installation wasn’t finished until just a few hours before we cast off the lines. We’re super excited about this one, though, and I can’t wait to really put it through its paces. Hopefully we can be a little less reliant on the generator and shore power this season.
Starting in September, we knocked out a project list that would have been a full off-season on Silent Sky, but Windara is in much better shape for it, and it’ll make our cruising season so much easier.
Off-season projects
- Replace refrigerator condenser & cooling plate
- Replace shower & v-berth hatches
- New stereo installation
- Watermaker repair
- Solar installation
- Engine maintenance
- Change home port on hull
- Organization
- Deep cleaning – interior and exterior
- Junk removal
- Rebedding leaking deck hardware
- Replacing winch handle pockets
- Replace main & jib halyards
- Clean & protect dinghy
