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| Egret fishing in Rumson Creek |
Upon our arrival home, before we could move into the house, I insisted on dusting and vacuuming the whole house. I put dust covers over the beds and living room furniture when we left on our trip. All that had to come off, and I had more loads of laundry to do between the house and the boat than I could count.
Once that was done, we could move back in. As I packaged things up on the boat, Clark did the "lion's share" of the work carrying it all up to the house. It is comparable to moving from one furnished apartment into another. Food, clothing, laptop computers, guitar stuff, arts and crafts stuff, toiletries, etc., it all had to move. No matter how hard I try to remember all the storage places that need to be emptied or sorted through, I tend to overlook something. After sitting on the boat for day after day, it's a shocking amount of exercise!
One of the first non-boat things I tackled when we got home was pulling weeds and trimming bushes. We had the starts of a jungle on the edge of our property, and I could not stand to look at it. We still have a large number of weeds to go after. My work so far just gave the property a quick "face lift".
When we are not busy working on the boat or the yard, we can admire the deer that feed in our backyard. This morning four deer were enjoying a breakfast of all the plants I try to grow. The ones in the photos below are actually dining, or snoozing, on the opposite side of the creek.
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| Scavenging Deer in a neighbor's yard |
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| Deer lounging in Rumson Dogwood tree in the foreground |
Perhaps the azalea are not to the deer's taste as they have not yet decimated those bushes as they have the other plants in our yard.
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| Pink Azaleas at side of our house |
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| White in front yard of our house |
Although we may not be sleeping or eating on the boat, that does not mean we are not spending a majority of our time on the boat. Fortunately, it is docked conveniently behind our house giving us easy access to work on it. Clark and I each came home with a "to do" list for the boat. Some things we have been able to jump on right away; others require ordered items to arrive before work can begin.
Besides some repair work, we arrived home with months worth of travel dirt that we are trying to remove. The day after we arrived home Clark was out washing the exterior of the boat from bow to stern. Nest he got to work on the rust stains. Since then we have been tackling items one-by-one. The temperatures this week have been in the 50s. One thing we know, it's better to work on the boat when it's cool / cold outside than when it is hot, so we're trying to tackle as much as possible before warmer weather comes in.
Given that philosophy, I was motivated to go out and polish the stainless steel railings and any chrome on the boat with a bottle of Barkeeper's Friend. It works great, and I was making good progress until I got, quite literally, washed away by Clark's work. I managed to get the bow rail clean while he was busy applying a product to remove rust stains from the fiberglass.
Unfortunately, after he applied the product, he needed to rinse the boat which included the walkway where I was working. Thus, I either had to relocate or get a shower and my feet washed. I moved up to the upper helm to clean the railings up there. I completed that work and was done for the day. It rained the next day, so I came back the day after that to finish cleaning the lower-level railings. They all now sparkle.
Our stabilized binoculars stopped working, and Clark took them into the basement shop yesterday, and he found that a wire had come off the connection screw. He put it back on but then found a screw hole with a cracked piece that he glued. This morning, he finished assembling and testing them and returned them to service.
Just as we left Marlin Bay Marina in Marathon, I noticed that our dinghy cover was shredded and in too bad a shape to even attempt a repair. When we got to Pompano Beach, our friend Steve gave us an oversized cover that he had bought but ended up not needing. He gave it to us. We used temporary lines to tie the cover onto the dinghy and to the base it sits on. When we got to our friend Ralph's home, we had spare time and I salvaged any reusable parts from the old dinghy cover and then disposed of the shredded fabric.
Today, I pulled out my Singer sewing machine and used those salvaged connectors and lines to modify the replacement cover to a more permanent solution. The cover is too large for our dinghy, so it inflates in a strong breeze of which we had many on the trip home. Clark noticed that the dinghy did not have the mildew issue we had with our prior cover. Perhaps the fact that air can get under the cover is a good thing. Time will tell.
After we declared the dinghy cover "done", Clark started work in the anchor locker. First, he found out from Kevin, a sister ship owner, the windlass has a maintenance item involving checking the gear box oil. Kevin helped him locate the fill hole. No fluid ran out when he removed the plug, so he began pumping in the required SAE90 oil. He ran out and had to find another bottle. The gear box must have been quite dry.
Next, he pulled all the chain and line out and spread it around on the gunnel of the boat. Then he vacuumed the locker. The collected dirt, twigs, and leaves that came out of the vacuum bag almost made it look like he had vacuumed up a bird's nest. Next he washed the two sections of the anchor locker and let it dry.
We have markings on our anchor line to show the amount of feet of line we have out. Unfortunately, by the time we got home, the markings were obscured by the dirt collected on the line making it hard to know how much line was deployed. So today, while I went to the store to buy a new permanent marker for the job, Clark hosed down the anchor line to wash off months of grime. Once the washing was finished and with the line drying on the cabin roof, he reapplied the permanent marker to the line to more easily see the markings. He using a 2" dot for 25' and a 5" dash for 100'.
One of our portlight visors has a small gap creating a leak into the open window when it rains requiring us to close it in the rain. Some Life Seal just arrived today, and he applied it to seal the window visor. He attempted to fix it a few days back, but the sealer had gone bad and even after two days would not dry. Thus, it was a pretty busy day for working on his check list.
Clark has been watching a problem with one of the engines where he finds a small amount of antifreeze under the engine. For a while now, he has been trying to figure out the source of the leak. Once we got home he jumped on this job and did some work to find this annoying issue. He's now waiting for O-rings and a new engine anti-freeze hose.
Clark sent away one of the displays for our engine stats for repair as the glass had yellowed to a point it was hard to see the information displayed. Tonight, he got word that it is fixed and will be in the mail tomorrow. The person he uses for this work is located in Florida, and the turn around time is amazingly fast.
Other projects Clark worked on since returning home include replacing the batteries in the Cable Master remote control. With a little help from me, he also inspected and tested the engine room fire extinguisher. Each year, it has to be weighed, the pressure gauge checked, and the engine shutdowns tested. Everything passed and was noted on the inspection sticker.
Another task for Clark was to review the navigation waypoints and routes in the chart plotter and adjust them and combine the waypoints he dropped on the way home into some routes. For some unknown reason doing this for the waypoints in the Chesapeake gave him quite a hard time.
The next project Clark plans to tackle is to clean the power cord for the boat. We did some research on what to do and not to do related to cleaning it. Interesting that many folks on forums recommended acetone or WD-40. However, further checking on the internet asking AI what can damage the insulation, AI states that these products should not be used as they damage the cord. Clark found several options already on the boat for the job and will test them to see which one works the best.
Once the marine-grade canvas I ordered from Sailrite arrives, I will be busy on my sewing machine once again. A while back, I made covers for our windshield wipers to prevent them from deteriorating so quickly in the sun and saltwater. The covers I made now have to be replaced as holes have appeared in the existing ones. I currently have them held together with a product called "tear aid" that I used to make a temporary patch without any sewing involved.
The boat demands our attention even when we are not living onboard. The house plays "second fiddle". We have one major landscaping project that should have been completed last year or preferably the one before and now is dangerously deteriorated. The paver steps down to the dock have started to collapse. Estimates we got for the job last summer were staggering with the clear message that the businesses giving the estimates did not want the job. A neighbor just gave us the name of someone they used and recommend, so that is our next plan of action, i.e., to call him.
We have a busy summer planned, and we are trying to accomplish as much now as possible.
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