November 2, 2005: The Redondo Beach house, 317 S Maria, is sold. What we did not sell in the garage sale, we packed the remaining furniture and accumulations of the last 10 years into a truck and made the trip out to Tucson to store for the next five years. Phoebe on her last bicycle ride for a couple years. Our neighbors were a huge help, thank you Carla, Erica and Greg! It took less than two hours to stuff all the "house junk" into the truck. The next day, plus nine hours of driving we arrived in Tucson and began the process of packing it all into storage units. Emma's parents are allowing us to house it all in Rubbermaid storage units on the side of their house. Our 1982 Diesel VW Vanagon was also stored in the side yard, we disconnected the battery and hoped for the best. Once finished, Emma's parents had a going away party in the back yard with friends and family from Tucson, who won't be able to attend the send off in Redondo Beach. Emma and the children will remain in Tucson until I can finish the jobs with the boat crews.
November 16, 2005: I'm in Reno to finalize our move to Nevada, changing my drivers license and address. It's always a joy to work with administrators. I usually have my "ducks" in a row but there always seems to be one piece of paper that is required to complete the task. Good news is that the boat is really beginning to come together. We are now overdue for our intended departure date. Emma and I had picked November 15th years ago but there are still details that need to be finalized.
The completion of the rewire is nearing its end. A trash can full of wire and stuffing were removed from the main mast. Only the mizzen mast, connection of all the electronics to their antennas and new aft light remain. I think within one week we will call the re-wire complete.
Ramon and Eduardo are very busy doing epoxy repair. They are fixing shoddy patches that are failing, which is causing the gel coat to crack. Once the epoxy has cured, Ramon will LP (paint) the new surface and we won't be looking at outlines of smiley faces on the deck or coach house. Ramon is also making epoxy backing plates for the new stainless steel dingy davits, aft bench seat and traveler for the mizzen boom.
Tea from the House of Stainless did a flawless job and I'm pleased to say he actually works too fast! Always beating me to the boat. The Bowsprit and forward and aft lifeline stantions were also replaced with thicker stainless tubing.
The sails are at TA sails in Wilmington. We are making a new vertical batten main sail. The existing sail was an old horizontal batten sail that was patched to work with the exterior Harken roller furling. Needles to say, it did not furl very well. I can't even imagine how it would have reefed? The Genoa, Stays'l and Mizzen sails are all being re-sewn and new webbing is being attached to the hardware.
The switlik life raft was supposed to go into Avalon Rafts for a re-pack tomorrow but the guys are out with the flu and I'm stuck here in Reno. We will re-schedule when I get back. November 27: Happy 6th Birthday Drake! All our research to sail around the world with children suggested the ages of 6-13 were the best!
Thor, refrigeration, has installed the bracket on the front of the Perkins engine motor mounts. On this bracket he placed the new engine driven compressor for the refrigerator and added an additional 90 amp alternator. The bracket will then be braced back to front of the Perkins itself so everyone will have the same "jiggle". This should make the fan belts last a little longer. Previously the compressor was mounted on the stringer that the engine motor mounts bolt into. Thus when the engine was bouncing one way the stringer would either be stationary or feeling the effect of the sea on the hull. Either way it was not a good set up. If all comes together with Thor, we should have cold beer by next week. Both the water maker (Village Marine Tech) and the generator (Kohler) are set for service calls. I wanted to wait for the last minute on the water maker as I'm in LA harbor and the new water maker membranes will have to be pickled until we can reach blue water. The clock starts ticking on membranes that are pickled and I don't need to add any additional project to my list of thing to do. As for the Kohler generator, I don't like the look of the heat exchanger and my past experience with heat exchangers made me re-power the Perkins. I'm really not too interested in renting a crane again. The last little piece of the puzzle, is my rigger. I'm having Jib Kelly from Kelly Marine in San Pedro replace the existing insulators with new insulators from Hayn Marine. They are called Hi-Mod and have the reputation for "fail safe". These go on the port side, main mast back stay. The single side band (SSB/HAM) radio antenna attaches in between the two insulators and in effect the port back stay becomes a huge radio antenna. The port back stay was the only standing rigging that the previous owner could not account for its age. He had the boat for seven years so its tired and absolutely needs to be replaced. I'll also have Jib do a full standing rig survey just to check and make sure that I have not miss anything critical. Other than replacing the fresh water hoses (Whale) and the head hoses (Trident), I really think that is about it. I know it sounds like there is still a huge amount of work left to be done. In comparison from where we have been, Emma and I are excited that the major re-build is really coming to an end.