A Lot of Progress

It has been a while since we posted and a lot has happened. We purchased a few more items for the boat at great prices. You have to love Craigslist. One of which was an eight person self inflating life raft. All through the summer and this winter, we have diligently been working at home on all the "stuff" we stripped from the boat. Jeanne has been working on all the stainless steel. I have stripped and rebuilt all the winches. Bob has gotten good progress done on the engine and we hope to fire her up in the next week or two. Below are some updated pictures. Stay tuned as we hope to have Living Life in the water soon.

Jeanne outside working on the stanchions

A before and after shot of the stanchions

Some of the stainless before and after cleaning

 

Some of the stainless after cleaning

One of the winches torn down for cleaning

Parts after cleaning

Engine upside down, but bottom end complete

Turned upright. Ready for flywheel and bell housing

- The Captain

Captain...I'm givin' it all she's got...but there's something missing...

Engine completely broken down and ready for cleaning, inspection, replacing any parts deemed necessary to replace and painting. All you see above was done in about two and a half hours. We have a great work place for all of this. Once again, thanks Bob and Becky!

- The Captain

Lot's Happening

Where to begin. Jeanne and I took the engine last week over to Bob's work to power clean and drop the oil. Bob is a great friend of ours, a diesel mechanic and has offered his talents to do a full overhaul on the engine. Thanks Bob!

Bob power washing the engine

Engine lifted in the air

Bob draining the oil

After all this, we strapped the engine back on the trailer and headed to his house. This will be it's home for the next couple of weeks.

Engine in Bob's garage

Apparently Bob got the itch to start breaking the engine down two days later and had Becky, his wife send some initial pics. These are from Becky.

Cute toes Becky!

Looking good!

Also this week, we picked up some new toys. My Mom and Dad visited us and brought with them our 45 lb. CQR anchor that Dad picked up off of Craigslist down in Key West a couple of weeks ago. Also, here is a pic of the Edson pedestal and guard Jeanne mentioned in her post and our Lofran windlass we picked up off of Craigslist.

Edson pedestal

45 lb CQR

Lofrans Progress One windlass

That's about it. Preparing the boat for painting still. Should have pics soon of the boat completely stripped. Have a good weekend.

- The Captain

The 3Ms

Oh my, this would be the first post from the "Admiral", as Sean has taken to calling me. It has been a REALLY busy 4 days! Thursday,we drove to Jacksonville to check out the engine we wanted to purchase for the boat. Sean was thrilled with it, so we finalized the transaction and made arrangements to return to take our new baby home. The best part of the day was making new friends! Barbara and Reggie (yes, Reggie, we both know she always comes first), are awesome people! We hope this will be a long term friendship, and are confident it will be. After scurrying back home, we took my daughter, Sarah, and a few of her friends out for her 21st birthday dinner. What fun! Returned home....nite nite mama.

Friday was more of the birthday celebration, (21 only comes once), with a party to include 50 of her closest friends, affectionately referred to collectively as the termites. Termites, you ask? Well.....they come out of the woodwork, without warning.....consume everything in sight.....then their wings fall off and they drop where they stand. And I love them all! I think sleep finally found us about 4AM. Oh well, the things we do for our children.

My tireless husband was up at 6 to Lowe's for plywood for the trailer to pull our new engine. He dragged my "happy ass" up at 7:45, on the road by 8:00. After Barbara and Reggie graciously took us to lunch, the 3Ms (Macho Marine Mechanics) started on the extraction from Submit. (See S/V Submit: Cautions and Extractions for their details) Barbara and I opted to avoid the potential bloodbath and venture to Publix for their provisions. Upon our return, we were very pleased to find them both not only alive and uninjured, but smiling, with the engine hanging 12 feet above the ground.

They, on the other hand, were even happier to see a suitcase of Heineken in hand! My favorite exchange of the day......

Barbara: I'm glad it went off without any problems.
Reggie: I never said that! It was a pain in the ass!

Later.....

Barbara: (inspecting said engine on the trailer), You two did a great job.
Reggie: Keep dreaming, Alice! You're almost in Wonderland.

This delightful couple then took us for a bite, we acquired a "new" pedestal for the cockpit from an old salt at the marina, secured the straps and headed home with our precious cargo. We took the day today to enjoy Easter Dinner with family, and will be back at it tomorrow.....if, of course, Sean can drag my "happy ass" out of bed!

- The Admiral

Busy Week

I am a pretty big optimist. It can also be one of my downfalls. I have always tackled problems with the attitude, "No problem...two weeks". Well, the last thing in preparing the top-deck for epoxy filling, gelcoat repair and paint, was tackling the bow pulpit. I have been putting this off to the bitter end as I really didn't want to find out how bad it was. Very abnormal for me. Here is the best picture I have of what the bow pulpit looked like.

If you look closely, some previous owner hacked this job. Apparently at one point, the teak had been replaced with plywood and then a very poor attempt at fiberglass was made. As you can see, it was all rotten, a ton of screws in, falling apart...just nasty. I really, really was not looking forward to finding what was underneath. But, it needed to be done. I began chipping away and peeling off and taking my trusty boat chisel, scraped all the crap off. Much to my surprise, it all came off relatively quickly and most of the gelcoat underneath was still in tact. Here is the afterwards picture.

With a little work on the gelcoat, some sanding, it will be good as new.

On to other stuff. During the week while we are working on the boat, we stay at Jeanne's parent's house in St. Petersburg, as they are only ten minutes from where we have the boat. I'd like to thank them immensely for putting up with us and their hospitality. Love you guys. Well, while there this week, good and close friends of the family came to visit, Chuck and Kay. We had a wonderful visit with them and it was good to see them again. Here is a nice picture of Kay, Jeanne, Chuck and Katie (Jeanne's mother).

Back to boat stuff. We own an engine! Thanks to our new good friends, Reggie and Barbara of SV Submit. We drove over to meet them in Jacksonville yesterday and to take a look at their engine, a Perkins 4.107 they have for sale, which is currently in their boat. After hearing it run and so forth, we completed the transaction. I feel bad for Reggie as I was hoping to assist him in extracting the engine, but could not as that leads to the next topic.

Sarah, Jeanne's daughter, turned 21 yesterday. We took her and some of her close friends out to dinner last night. Here is a nice one of her with, of course, a shot.

Tonight we have a big BBQ planned for her birthday where no doubt, the house is going to be packed with her friends and family...but mostly termites.

Big week next week. Hopefully we will take delivery of our engine and start filling holes. Stay tuned.

- The Captain

Deconstruction Finished

This week was a fairly productive week. The boat is completely stripped of all hardware. It looks barren and quite ugly now. I'm glad it is finished now as Jeanne is getting itchy to start putting the boat back together, but it will be a slow process. Preparing the top deck for paint will consist of multiple steps. First step...fill in all the holes. Went to FiberGlass Coatings, Inc. here in St. Pete on Thursday to get supplies and to talk to their specialists. They are fantastic for DYIers like us. Tommy spent 45 minutes first listening to what we would like to accomplish and then showing and explaining all the different options for us to create a professional looking job. After we all came up with what we felt was the best solution, we carried out our two part epoxy. Monday we start drilling and filling and we plan to show the steps with pictures for anyone who might be interested. Stay tuned.

- The Captain

Some Good News

Went out to the mailbox and found this. USCG accepted our name changes. We are official now.

- The Captain