End of Year Catch Up #1

We've been a bit negligent updating our blog this month.  Part of that was due to the fact that our onboard internet solution died along with all the other things that have decided to fall apart over the past month or so.  Hopefully, most of that stuff is behind us now, we shall see.

In any case, here follows several short updates to catch up on a few of our activities over the past three weeks.

Early December Repairs
St. Martin is the perfect location for those looking to refit or make repairs to their boats.  There are fully stocked marine stores with everything and more that your typical West Marine might have at home, and plenty of skilled technicians around that specialize in all the standard systems that might typically be found on a typical cruising boat.  While the rest of the Caribbean has only very limited access to marine supplies, you can find almost anything here.  So, we took advantage. 

Auto Pilot Repairs
Just over a year ago while sailing to Bermuda, the metal bracket for our autopilot ram was badly damaged.  I had it "repaired" and added some additional metal to make it stronger.  But, I was never able to get it to seat perfectly and after trying several solutions over the past year, I finally bit the bullet and decided that I needed to build a custom footing to take up the space between the brackets bottom flange and the mounting block on the hull. 

A couple of days later, after some fun with epoxy and epoxy fillers, the almost finished product looked like this and we are back to 100%.








Repairs - Painting the Bathroom Floor

Not all projects are gucci glory projects...

Project number two involved repainting the floor in the head with Awlgrip.

Initially I thought that it would be a good idea to learn how to use this paint since so much of the boat is painted with it and I figured I could save a few dollars at the same time.

WRONG!!  This project probably took twice as long and cost at least as much as paying an expert.  It's not that I had problems, but by the time you purchase the sandpaper, chemical cleaner/degreaser, paint, paint catalyst, thinner, flattening agent, roller, brushes, etc, etc, etc. you have saved no money at all!!

At the end of several days, the end result is great and I have plenty of left over (very expensive) painting supplies for the future.

I guess I'll have to find some more projects!

Cockpit Table Upgrade

Our final project was putting new legs on our cockpit table which had been "non functional" for over ten years!!