Technical
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A hole is filled
Just a quick update to let you know, we did manage to fill the hole in our boat before we left! Our piece has a few ‘dry patches’ on it but these will be taken care of when we do the final securing of the piece in the boat. Kevin will make trips down when he can to complete the repair job but we are so happy to know that Seasura is in one piece again and likely much more secure while it stays on the hard in Port Canaveral until we are ready to move her.
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We have a replacement piece!
Another week gone by and we have managed to get ourselves a new piece to fit into our boat! The infusion was quite the experience. It took us many tries to get the vacuum set up properly on the mold. Eventually what worked was, taking everything off and applying three thin layers of resin to it. We think there were tiny pinholes in the mold that prevented the vacuum from fully forming. When we made the mold, the bottom layer of fiberglass did not appear to be fully saturated because there were tiny white bubbles. Kevin had filled them a little with Bondo, and then wax, but we suspect this…
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Boatyard life
Since my last post we have moved out of the Airbnb’s and onto the boat again. I wish I could say that it was because our boat was almost ready and we were going back in the water, but that is far from the case. It has been challenging to be on the boat while on the hard, but there are still many benefits. The kids have rolled with all the challenges. We are able to use much of the functions of our boat, including the electricity (for lighting and cooking), the starlink for internet, and some running water. However, the sinks drain into either the gray water tanks (that…
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Building a mold
The last week we have been working hard on creating our mold from which we will build our new piece of hull. We have had some reassuring visits from other people in the boatyard, that have done this sort of work in the past, who say that they would do it the same way! It is reassuring, not because I thought Kevin didn’t know what he was doing, but because we have also had several people ask if we really needed to be do as much as we are doing. The answer is yes! There really was that much damage and we really did need to do that much repair.…
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Sand and shape, sand and shape
There isn’t as much to report on this week because almost all our time has been dedicated to repairing the boat. We now have a monstrous hole in our starboard forward hull! You can see into Owen’s cabin AND the starboard bow locker, at the same time, from the outside. I will try to detail what we have done for the repair. Kevin spent a great deal of time trying determining the amount of damange and smoothing out the outside hull to be used as a form to create a mold from. While he was doing this, I continued to dismantled Owen’s cabin, including the shelving, his bed and the…
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Regrowing our sea legs
We are back on the boat! While our time on land was good, we are happy to be continuing on with our journey, and not just because we are heading to hotter weather. It was great catching up with family and friends (and for me patients too)! We had several nice dinners with family and walks with friends. I didn’t realize just how much I missed everyone. However, being away from the family for most of the time while I worked was really hard. They managed to do a lot of schoolwork and swimming while they were at Kevin’s parents house. I think that helped pass the time and I…
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Flushing out an important boat job
So I have avoided talking about our toilets because I didn’t want to delve too far into all the crap we have been putting up with (pun intended, unfortunately). But, we have finally got our selves almost set up properly so I am moving beyond the trauma of this part of our boat improvements. I also think it is good to cover the toilet fiascos because they truly are an important aspect of boating life. We got our toilets going in Carriacou and could tell that they didn’t always work the way they were supposed to. There are 5 toilets on our boat. One in each head, in which there…
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Almost ready. . .
Wow, it has been a busy week and a half. We are so close to leaving. In fact we leave the area tomorrow. We will head out Long Island Sound and stop briefly in Newport, Rhode Island to check out of the country and make sure our fuel tanks are filled up. We are feeling more and more ready for this next leg of the adventure. In the last week we have been trying to put Seasura in ‘ship shape’. In otherwords, we are provisioning and organizing/cleaning up etc. so that she can withstand the longer passage. We have stocked up on spare parts for all the major systems and…
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A week. . . in Solomons
Sorry it has been a little longer since my last post. We have been spending long days working on the boat to get the electronic system upgraded. This meant completely taking out the batteries, the wires and switches for the DC power system all the way up to the distribution chanel (break panel). Kevin is reconfiguring it to add in the new batteries as well as 3 new 5 kW inverter/chargers. This will allow us to have AC power all the time, and lots of it, to support our electric galley, as well as decrease our dependance on our generator. We are also adding in over 3kW of solar panels…
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The big move
Well, another step closer. We moved to the boat today. We have enough of the place set up to at least sleep on the boat and cook on the boat. We still haven’t gotten in the water though. That is planned for Monday. This is in part because Kevin was still fixing the rudder but also because the Travel Lift, or the big boat crane, was fully booked for Friday and they weren’t able to do us anyway. We have it booked for Monday though. It will be great to be in the water because then we can use the fridge. We are using an electric cooler right now, but…
