2026 September: Boat Prep plus

 August was gone in the blink of an eye, and September seems to be passing even quicker as we get closer and closer to our departure date for our boat ride south. Our time has been consumed with taking care of our health and prepping the boat. Every time I turn around, Clark has something he is working on or has added to the boat to-do list. Many / often times Clark's boat projects include use of my time to help get the jobs done faster / more efficiently. 

4 September 2026 - Friday

Each time we used the boat anchor this summer, a pile of rust appeared around the winch. Clark decided it was time to replace the anchor chain. We replaced 55 feet of chain, and when he weighed the chain, he found that it weighed about 80 pounds. He had to lift it a couple of times, but that proved to be a bad idea as it did strain some muscles. Thankfully, he does not appear to have any lasting issues from the exertion. 

He tied off the anchor to cleats before he disconnected the chain from the shackle to replace the chain. 

Extracting the chain from
the anchor and line

The old portion of line connected to the chain had to be cut before it could be reused to remove the worn section. Clark used a hot gun to cut the line to seal the ends.

Cutting off the old / worn out line section

3 Strands of rode to be spliced

Last time Clark sat on the boat splicing a line, it was when our anchor line suddenly got severed at anchor. That time he did the splicing of the anchor line to the anchor as I drove the boat to our next anchorage. This time I got to watch him at work. As I watched his efforts, I understood why he told me to drive slowly to the anchorage. The splicing is tedious and time-consuming. 

Clark splicing the line to the chain

He even tapered the splice to help ease the line through the winch. The first few times we use it, I will need to help move it along as it tends to get stuck until it gets wet and pulled tight.

The finished splicing result

I helped Clark move the chain along the side of the boat to feed it down into the anchor locker. Clark did the splicing while sitting in the pilot house to stay out of the sun while working.

New anchor chain in place!
(line shown to right is tying us to the dock)

Clark and I like to listen to music or NPR while traveling from point to point. On occasion I have used a speaker to play music from my Spotify or Pandora accounts while underway. Cark decided that we should install a Bluetooth receiver on the boat and tie it into our stereo system. I will still play tunes from my cellphone but they will come out of the boat speakers instead of my portable speaker. 

Of course hooking that up required some engineering on Clark's part. His optimistic solution turned out to be a fail because we found interference from navigation equipment, so all we got was a loud hum when we hit play. Unfortunately, any alternate solution rendered the issue of no power being available to run the Bluetooth unit, i.e. it would run on battery whenever in use. Clark found that to be an unacceptable solution. 

To install the wiring for the unit Clark had to tear apart some sections of the pilot house. Fortunately, or maybe not so fortunately, he had pulled down the access panels more times than we can count, so he is an old hand at this job. 

Speaker dangling from ceiling

Looking at the wiring layout and options

He finally decided to feed a wire out a cutout on the wood trim to get the power cable to an outlet. Neat, and not conspicuous, solution. 

The other project he decided needed to be tackled was a deteriorating strip of varnish on the hatch cover to the pilot house. Today he applied the nth coat to the job.

Fixing up the varnish on the hatch cover 
to the pilot house

5 September 2026 - Saturday

With all the Sunset Delight work done yesterday, Clark took a break from that to try out our new electric motor for our spare dinghy. We shoved the dinghy into the water off the dock, Clark set the outboard in place, and we took it for a spin. I took some photos as we motored along at a very slow top speed of about 4 knots. This configuration will not ever produce a wake!

Setting the outboard in place

This dinghy is not designed for comfort like our other one. There is a seat for one. The other person has to sit on a tube. I have to sit catty-corner to Clark to balance the dinghy. As we puttered out of our creek, I enjoyed observing the birds and other critters we saw along the way.

Egret

Another egret

Sea Gull

Another Sea Gull

As we left our creek, Clark noticed a rather huge jellyfish in the water. Just a few days before he had been diving under the keel of Sunset Delight to look at the props. I bet he would have reconsidered if he knew the size of the jellyfish that were in the water with him!

One of many huge jellyfish

It was too bad our grandkids were not visiting as we saw a crab attached to our dock just waiting to be scooped up!

Crab on our dock

My job while we were out, besides admiring the wildlife and scenery, was to record performance numbers from the outboard. We had issues as we tried it out in that it stalled periodically for no apparent reason. The instructions said that it would stall if something got entangled with the prop. Clark thought maybe we were running into jellyfish.

I used "Keep" on my phone
to record numbers as called out

After he dropped me off, Clark ran up and down the creek a few times to see if he could understand what was happening. 

When Clark was pulling the engine off the dinghy to pull it back on the dock, he noticed that the power / connector cable was defective. He showed me the connector, and I could see that things did not look symmetrical but was otherwise none the wiser as to the issue. He contacted the company and they said they would send a replacement cable. 

(The new / good replacement took a few days to arrive. Even so, Clark decided to take a look at the original cable and ended up fixing it. Now we have two!)

Repaired cable

After our dinghy adventure, I thought our boating for the day was concluded, but Clark had other thoughts. He wanted to exercise Sunset Delight to get some water under the keel. It was a great day for a boat ride.

I love looking at clouds!

We were not the only ones out on the water enjoying the day. Some guys were out on their jet skis zipping this way and that. One guy signaled us that he wanted us to go fast and make a wake for him. I just shook my head no at him and he went away. At over $6.00 a gallon for diesel fuel, we are not interesting in running up the engine for someone else to jump our wake. 

He was kind of crazy when he did find a wake to jump. A couple of times I thought he would flip the  jet ski over on top of himself. Each time he recovered but it was scary to see.

On the way home from our run to Sea Bright and back, we found a sailboat out enjoying the day.

We got back to our dock and called it a day around 5:30. Time to go find some dinner!

6-7 September 2026 - Sunday and Monday

When we were out on our maintenance run on Saturday, I noticed that the boat was grimy. 

From floor to ceiling and everything in between the boat needed a good scrub. On Sunday, I cleaned every square inch of the upper helm and on Monday I cleaned every square inch of the cockpit. 

I neglected to take pictures of the upper helm but did take some of the cockpit.

Floor cleaned with vinegar added to cleaning bucket

Freshly cleaned life ring!

I was envious of the deer lounging in our backyard as I scrubbed and scrubbed!

I am not sure what Clark was doing while I scrubbed the boat from top to bottom. He has a long list that never seems to get shorter of things to do before we leave dock.

8 - 11 September 2026

This summer, our Idaho contingent came out to visit us. That is our older son, Jeff, his wife, Devon, and our three grandchildren - Sierra, Violet, and Zoe. After they left us they toured several states to visit family and National Parks before going home. Devon sent me pictures she had taken, and I created a Shutterfly book for the girls with the pictures from their trip.

It took several tries to get the right book size and all the pictures positioned correctly. I finally managed after several frustrating days to get the book ordered on the 12th of this month. Fortunately, there was a 50% off deal in progress, so I saved a pretty penny!

Their trip ended at their home in Boise, Idaho where a balloon festival occurred nearby soon afterwards.

Devon and Jeff

Sierra, Zoe, and Violet

Clark asked if I could make a cover for our new electric outboard motor. Fortunately, I had some canvas sitting around that I could use. I made a pattern by tracing the outboard onto a piece of unprinted newspaper paper. I crawled around on the basement floor making the pattern. Clark had requirements for how much of the engine he wanted to have protected. Other than that I had free reign on deciding what it should look like.

Measuring the outboard for 
its new cover

I tried to use the sewing machine I have in the house, but it is a cantankerous unit. I don't know how many times the thread broke, and I ran out of needles after so many of them broke as well. 

Finally, Clark helped me move my project to the boat to use the sewing machine I have on there. It is not a Sailrite machine, but it is a good "work horse". I made it to the end of the project with its help. I was so happy to have the job done, I forgot to take a picture of the end product!

12 September 2026 - Saturday

We had so much fun the other two times we got together with our neighbor Marina to play piano / guitar after dinner that we did it again tonight. This time I made the dinner, and Marina brought strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert. After dinner, we ran across the street to her place to use her piano. Ours has not been tuned in many years. She thought it might be best to use hers.

Clark brought a book with folk songs in it, and we played / sang them all evening. "Oh Susanna! ..." 

It's interesting that the same song can be written in so many different keys. Marina and Clark work together to get something that works for her on piano and him on guitar. I just sing along with whatever!

14 September 2026 - Monday

I do not know what caused it, or what corrected it, but for about 5 days I had to take is easy as I had daily episodes of vertigo. I woke up in the morning with the room spinning around me. One move in the wrong direction, and the room took off. I played a lot of Mah Jongg this week, which worked out fine as long as I didn't move my head too quickly to the left. 

17 September 2026 - Thursday

Earlier this month, Clark took note of the fact that a production of the play "Come From Away" would be playing at Bell Works in Holmdel, NJ. The play started at 7:00; we were told to arrive at 6:30. Clark decided to make a night of it, and we went to a restaurant in Holmdel for pizza before the show.

We arrived at Bell Works in plenty of time to walk the first floor and theater level of the building - the only floors open to the public. Both Clark and I worked in this building when it was AT&T Bell Laboratories - that is how we met almost 50 years ago now. It was nostalgic to walk around. 

Someone working as an usher for the show talked to us briefly where Clark told him he had worked there in the past. The usher then told Clark to give me a tour! We set him straight on that as I had worked there many years as well as Clark!

The play was fabulous. The sound was perfect - not too soft that one can't hear the words and not so loud that it is deafening. The story of folks being directed to Gander airport in Newfoundland on 9/11/2001 was well told. 

18 September 2026 - Friday

The next day Clark remembered that we needed to get our flu and covid vaccines before we left town. He called Walgreens, and they said, "Come on over!" A lovely and fun-loving nurse, Randelle, gave us our vaccines. She got a kick out of Clark and I bantering with each other. 

Clark wanted to know which one hurt more, so he got a shot in each arm. I wanted only one arm aching, so I got both in the same arm. I ended up with almost no pain in my arm. Clark ended up with pains in both arms, a headache that attacked both sides of his head, congestion, and stomach issues. Wow! I got away Scott Free and he got walloped! 

19 September 2026 - Saturday

When I don't feel well (like with the vertigo earlier in the month), I take it easy to try to recover. Clark, sick as he was, decided that because rain was coming on Sunday, we should go to the store, buy bags of dirt, come home and spread the dirt, and plant grass seed. Of course we did it!

I spent the rest of the day sorting through what to bring on the boat from the games and crafts department, which meant I was buried in my sewing room for hours. 

20 September 2026 - Sunday

We had rain over night to water the grass seed, but today we only really had a cloudy sky. I decided that I needed to tackle getting the boat organized. We had things on board we did not need and not enough space for the things I wanted to bring. With the grandkids visiting this summer, we had a stateroom covered in life jackets that needed to be stowed. I spend the full day taking things off and bringing things on the boat.  Since I spent the day before deciding what crafts and games to bring, I now had to make room for all the stuff I identified as coming along for the ride!

22 September 2026 - Tuesday

We decided to change home insurance companies this summer. They sent an inspector out to check out the house. We got a notice today that the bushes around the house need to be trimmed, so as soon as Clark heard that we went outside to trim bushes. He took a hedge trimmer to them. I won't show a picture. I did not take one, but it is not particularly pretty. He was pretty brutal with my blessing. It will either fill in or we can tear it out. I really don't care. I would rather be boating that tending bushes!

Miscellaneous

In between chores and not feeling well, Clark and I have been taking care of doctor's visits and such. We both had reasons to visit the dermatologist. Clark had a few questions for our GP doctor. I went in for annual tests for mammography and bone density. 

There is still a lot that needs to be done before we leave. 

Clark has a recheck at the dentist coming up. 

I may have figured out what art supplies to bring on board, but I have yet to decide what clothes to bring. That is another big deal. As per usual, I will pick out a bunch of clothes, bring them to the boat, decide some are redundant, and take them back to the house all the while hoping I don't forget something critical in the process.

The car will need to go in for an oil change before we leave. It is also time for a car inspection, which in NJ for a car our age is every two years. Clark will put gas in the car with a stabilizer before we get underway. 

We dread to think of the cost, but we will need to get diesel fuel for the boat before we leave NJ. At well over $6.00 a gallon, it's going to be a big bill even though Clark does not plan to fill up to the full line.

One fun thing before we go if the weather cooperates - our street is having a block party the first weekend in October. We went two years ago and had fun. They bring in a food truck to serve dinner. We paid upfront and will only need to bring drinks with us to enjoy the festivities. We will set sail on the boat, weather permitting, shortly after the block party date.