Update

Well it’s been a while since our last update but we’ve been pretty busy. Tanya has finished up the paneling in the head, we put some final touches on the engine bay, installed the fuel filters, installed the windlass, epoxied the exposed core on the forward companionway, Awl-gripped the companionway sliders, fitted the new ports, and put the batteries, engine and v drive in place. The last few weeks have been a blur so that is the condensed version!

Tanya on the brad nailer!

Cleaning up the engine bay:

Fuel filters for the generator and engine:

Rebuilt windlass installed:

We epoxied the exposed core around the forward companionway to prevent water intrusion:

Awlgripped the companionway sliders. We’ll do the non skid next spring:

All the ports are fitted. Not a small job!

We installed (put in place) the new batteries, engine, and v drive.

Waiting for the crane:

“Is that the crane?”

After a week or two of false hopes, finally…

The batteries are 320 pounds each:

New engine going in:

V drive (hey it’s pretty heavy!):

 Soooo what happened next? Well a few weeks ago we came to the emotionally crushing conclusion that we were not going to make it back into the water this year. We made tremendous progress, amazing progress, but we experienced some delays along the way. Once one project gets delayed it affects every project down the line. In addition to delays, it was starting to get cold in Maine. You can see in the pictures that a lot of the leaves have fallen from the trees and we had a few nights that dipped down into the 30’s! We made the decision to close up the boat for the winter and finish up the refit next spring. Not at all what we had planned but we didn’t want to be rushed, we want things done correctly.

We’re bummed that we are missing our intended first cruising season but we’ll get in the water next year.

We have headed South for the winter to our home in Florida. We’ve brought several boat projects with us to complete over the winter. We have scheduled our launch date for June 28th and hope to be underway within a couple of weeks. We’re going to focus on the hull when we get back so, regardless of the rest of the projects, we can go back in the water.

We can’t thank everyone enough for all the help we received this summer! It was great to be around family and friends again! We will update the website from time to time over the winter.