Moving aboard

The boat is back in the water with fresh bottom paint looking good.  Now it is time to start the painful process of moving aboard.  I say painful not because I'm not looking forward to living on the boat, but because moving is always a pain, and when you try an shoehorn all the trappings of life ashore into a space roughly the size of your closet you need to make some tough choices about what you need and don't need.  i'm finding that I am continually asking myself, "how did I end up with all this shit?".  Fortunately I have a storage unit to handle some of the overflow, but that has a bunch of crap in it already.  I think the plan is, since I have to be out of the apartment by the end of the day tomorrow,  to put everything from the apartment into my Chevy trailblazer and gradually move what I need onto the boat over the weekend.  This should work since most of the furniture and large items came with the apartment and I've already done several rounds of tossing out/giving away stuff I really don't need.  After a few weeks on the boat, I should have a good idea of what I want to keep, and what takes up more space than its worth.

In reality, the Westsail has a tremendous amount of storage space for a 32 foot boat, and the previous owner lived aboard with his wife and 2 kids.  I cant imagine where they kept everything, but I guess you learn to live with less stuff,  a skill I will be trying to acquire over the next few months.........

Boatyard time

Friday morning around Dawn, I brought the boat over to the boat yard for Haul out with my friend Pauly. We had a nice ride over watching the sunrise and tied up at the work dock at Independent Boatyard at about quarter to eight (we had to be there by 8:30).  After signing in, the yard hauled Valkyrie first thing which was nice because sometimes you have to wait for hours if there are other boats.  Really I had planned on the whole process taking longer so I ended up taking it easy for the rest of the day and getting everything together for Saturday morning.

I started sanding early Saturday morning and and as I thought, the bottom was in good shape and it only took about 3 hours to sand the entire boat.  After lunch, I put the first coat on and the boat started looking really nice.  Sunday I put a second coat on and then inspected all the seacocks which were in good condition.  in climbing around in the engine room, I discovered the nuts on the battery terminals for the starting battery were very loose which is probably what caused the difficulty starting on Friday morning.  we'll see when we get back in the water.

Well, Friday is the day.  The boat is finally coming out of the water for paint.  I haven't gotten a lot done the last week because I was busy with work, and sailing on the weekends, but the time has come.  Friday morning I have to bring the boat around to Independent Boatyard, about an hour trip, and hopefully they'll haul the boat first thing.  Today I let the engine run for a while and checked to see how much fuel was in the tanks, about half full.  The one somewhat disturbing thing is that the engine doesn't seem to want to start with the starting battery alone, in fact it doesn't even begin to turn over..  When I parallel it with the house bank, it starts right up without any trouble.  I have a strong suspicion that the starting battery is nearing the end of its useful life.

Well this has been a good week for work on the boat.  Sunday I removed the old shifter in the cockpit   This was no easy task as corrosion had pretty much frozen it in place.  About 10 minutes of hacking with a heavy duty Milwaukee sawzall with a 12 inch metal cutting blade finally did it in. with the old one out, I realized the hole was too big for the new shifter.  Not good. Fortunately I had a few small hunks of teak in storage and shaped one of them into a plate that fit over the old hole, and drilled a smaller hole through the middle for the new shifter/throttle assembly. I epoxied this directly over the old hole and then it was ready for installation.

Monday, Lou came down to the boat and installed my used Icom 710 SSB radio and tuner.  Lou is an old HAM radio operator who kind of reminds me of my grandfather. he's really knowledgeable about radios and ran all new cables for the power, tuner and antenna(back stay).  With this I should be able to communicate and get weather within around a 4000 mile range.  Someday I will get a modem so that I can send emails as well.

Tuesday, Kevin came and began work replacing the forward bulkhead.  The new bulkhead will be around an inch thick and should do the job.  really all it does is keep the chain in the chain locker and support the two sampson posts on either side of the bowsprit.  As of today, he is close to done.  which means the boat is nearly back together.

Also this week, I received the TV/'DVD I ordered from amazon that will mount on the main bulkhead in the salon.   Its only about 16'', but it will be nice to watch a movie on the boat, and it runs off 12 volts.

The next step is bring the boat to the boatyard for a haul out and bottom job.  I think the transducer may need replacing as well.  She has virtually no bottom paint left at the moment, and has grown a pretty impressive beard in the last month since she was sling-hauled for the survey.

There's still the rigging and refrigeration that need a little attention, but I'm happy with the progress so far.  I've been try to get help from some of the tradesman I know not only because they're skilled guys, but because I'm working full time and if I try and do it all myself, I'll either screw it up, never finish or both, and I really want to keep the momentum up.

Working through the punch list

Well its been a very breezy week on St. Thomas, and work on the boat is progressing slowly.  The electrical system seems to be charging properly of the wind generator and solar panels, but still no luck on the engine shifter.  The wind has been blowing 20-30 knots for the last 7-10 days so the weather has not really been great for boating anyway.

The Plan......

Valkyrie is a Westsail 32 built at the factory in 1975.  I recently purchased her in St. Thomas from a gentleman who sailed her back and forth across the Atlantic several times before buying a much larger boat and settling on the island with his family.

My plan is to refit her and go sailing. Valkyrie is a proven blue water cruiser, but after many years of hard use, most of her systems need attention, the bottom needs paint, and she needs some overall TLC.

The main item taking precedence at the moment is replacing the engine shifter.  The diesel engine, a 3 cylinder Yanmar, runs well, but the shifter is badly corroded, and the throttle advance is stuck at around 1500 rpms which is much to high for normal shifting.  Larry the machanic is coming to look at it today. 

After the shifter is working properly(hopefully by the end of this week) I'll bring the boat to Independent Boatyard in Benner Bay for a haulout and bottom job.  The sling haul survey showed the bottom to be in surprisingly good condition, with only one small nick in the gellcoat, and virtually no bottom paint remaining.  This should make it relatively easy to sand and apply a couple of new coats.