Fixing Her Up

4 minute read

Haul-out

This is a cost we had not accounted for. We assumed we’d be in the shipyard at their old rate of about $40 a day for a few weeks. Turns out we were in at the new rate of nearly double that for about six months. It hurt every month to send in that check and the cost will now play a part in the longer-term budget of our cruising.

Bottom job

This was a painful process. Our stay in the incredibly expensive shipyard was extended by about 4 months awaiting dry enough weather to apply our Coppercoat bottom epoxy. We had lots of rust seeping through from the keel as well as a rudder that was holding water. The rudder was dried out and some epoxy was pumped in to fill the voids. Additionally the seal at the top of the rudder was re-sealed. The keel required lots of grinding and application upon application of InterProtect before it could get base epoxy and Coppercoat. The process was kind of a nightmare but hopefully our bottom will last for a very long time and slough off less damaging material when I scrub it down at anchor.

Topside and hull polishing

We decided to get the old girl scrubbed down of oxidation and waxed up. Obviously going forward this will be our task, but we decided to have the professionals get the boat to a great starting point. So now our job will be to maintain it the best we can. I’m sure in time we’ll get into a nice groove.

Water Maker

In order to make life aboard far more reasonable at anchor, we installed a Cruise RO 30 water maker. It makes 30 gallons per hour by drawing in seawater and processing it through reverse osmosis filtration. With this installed, we can make our own water as long as we have an electrical source. It’s unlikely that we’ll be able to support running it just from our own solar panels, but we can run the Honda 2200i generator to help balance the power draw.

Solar davit arch

We had Allen Denton (TRP) design and fabricate a custom stern arch. He is the most highly recommended fabricator in the area and after working with him and seeing his arches, it is clear why that is the case. He is a metalworking genius and possibly even more impressively, works his magic for a reasonable price. We had him design an arch to provide storage for solar panels, davits for hoisting the dinghy, and to replace our stern rails (pushpits) since keeping them in place would likely crowd the area and the starboard pushpit was badly bent (seems that when the boat was the Stagger Lee, she was rammed into lots of things). In addition to integrating new stern rails into the arch, he built in two seats up high for a neat place to sit while the weather is calm, or when we’re sitting at anchor.

New pulpit

Our pulpit was badly bent when we bought the boat and replacement is less expensive than straightening it when it is this far gone. So, once again Allen Denton to the rescue.

Battery bank

We had lots of issues with our batteries last summer for a couple of reasons. First, the capacity was too low. We had less than 200 AH of useable battery. Second, the batteries were lead-acid and required constant adding of water to keep the cells submerged (south Florida evaporates the water in the battery really fast). Third, lead-acid batteries cannot take a charge very fast, so in order to charge the batteries with the generator, we had to run it for a long time.

So, we upgraded to 640 AH of lithium Battle Born batteries. These batteries will nearly triple our usable battery capacity. Additionally, they can charge very quickly off the generator and/or solar panels, meaning that we’ll be able to handle far more electrical load than before. Last summer we were having to turn the fridge off at night. We had to run the generator while underway to allow us to keep the night time running lights lit. Now we should be able to run our modest electrical needs without too much concern. The biggest concern at this point will be the water maker and the washing machine, which draw quite a bit of electricity to operate. If the batteries cannot handle those excess loads, we’ll balance it out with the generator, easy peasy.

Also, after some difficulties regarding charging different types of batteries, we have upgraded our starter battery to a 100AH lithium Battle Born as well.

Washing Machine

We got a Daewoo Mini washing machine. It can dry as well, but that uses a lot of energy so it’s not too likely we’ll use that feature very often. It is currently getting installed at the foot of Fira’s berth.