Sometimes it feels as if we are just treading water and barely getting things done in time.  In the chill weather of December, I felt as if we were late getting the Shipmate wood burning stove installed.  In hindsight, I realize we beat the really cold weather of January and February.  In truth, I must admit that cold is relative.  We are in the Southwest, but the desert temperature swings mean that it is often nice during the day, but in the 20F range at night.  So, having the stove at night keeps us toasty warm and really makes living on the boat pleasant despite the lack of amenities.

One previous lack of amenities included lack of windows/glass.  A part of the “Project Boat Heat” initiative started last Fall was to get rid of some big drafts caused by open holes in the boat normally covered by glass.  Early on, the portals in the hull were installed and the butterfly hatches got beautiful new glass, but the latter was mainly to stop the rain from falling straight into the boat.  Other missing, broken or marred glass that wasn’t a big potential source of water leaks was postponed or overcome by higher priorities.  As the cold winter started blowing through Mahdee, those air leaks got higher priority.  We now have nice round fixed lights in the scuttle where we take our showers (a big improvement over the “place under the boat” with the colder weather.  We also have replaced the horribly scratched glass windows in the chart house where someone (prior to our ownership) decided to use sandpaper on the glass.  Of course, we discovered some rot under one of those two windows, so we had the opportunity to take care of that–a real two-fer.

Getting small oddly shaped pieces of tempered glass made is not easy.  The most expensive piece of glass was the forward center portal on the charthouse.  It met with its demise when we were trying to remove the portal hardware from Mahdee some two years ago.  One of our paid helpers was hitting a block of wood on the rim of the glass while I got ready to catch the portal.  This technique worked well for most of the big portals in the hull, but proved completely incapable on the small charthouse portals.  One powerful swing by this enthusiastic individual missed the block and hit the glass dead center.  The explosive impact blew out a small cone of glass similar to what you sometime see in old pickups parked by the side of the road during hunting season.  Of course, this portal, the middle one of three portals on her charthouse can’t be missed.  It is roughly 6 inches in front of the face of everyone who descended the ladder into the boat.  The visitor would then say “hunting accident?”  I would get this vision of the previous owner taking Mahdee hunting while biting my tongue and not saying, “yeah old Mahdee got mistaken for a deer and got shot right through her center eyeball.”  Instead, I would say “hammer accident.”  But I doubt that anyone believed a hammer had done the damage.  The 5 inch diameter glass in that portal was 3/8 inch thick and we had to search for a vendor who could cut a circle that small for tempered glass.  Now, however, we have a shiny new piece of glass there, no wind, and no weird comments.

That took care of most of the big air leaks, making Mahdee very nice and comfortable.  We could use a door, however, but the temporary door cut out of 1″ foam insulation is working fine.  Looking ahead, I wonder if we will be able to make the screen inserts before the weather warms and the bugs return!  I should be optimistic, since so far, we are keeping our head above water.

We are faced with the dilemma of either getting stuff done or writing about it. If we get stuff done, there is too much to write about and no time to do it, but if we were to try to write about it all, there would be nothing done to write about. Well, clearly we could try to balance the two, but instead we are very biased towards getting stuff done and getting relaunched. So, readers are missing out on much of the neat stuff being done, but not being written about. The big news is that the scaffold was moved from the port side to the starboard. The implication is that the port side hull is done–and with a few small exceptions it is basically done. All indications are that the starboard side will go much faster. After all, we have a learning curve behind us.

A while back, the hull was nicely sealed, so in accordance with my “how to build a wooden boat” posting it was time to drill more holes in the hull. I had already put in the big obvious thru-hulls and I thought most of the holes were “there.” So I was surprised when I added up the needed new holes and came up with more than 10. It was time to pull out the drill and get to work. The holes for the forward-looking sonar (a real cool toy), the hole for the speed-depth-temperature sensor, and the six holes for the deck drains. I think we are up to about 17 and there are about four more to go in the transom for two exhausts and two cockpit drains. The two holes I dread most are for the hawse pipes in the hull near the bowsprit. Oh, yeah, and the 6.25 inch counter bores for the spigots on the 7 starboard portals–those are a bear to drill without putting big gashes in the planks. And after that, the well-sealed, waterproof deck needs lots of new holes in it. The number of needed holes keeps going up the more I think about it…so I had better stop thinking.

Speaking of holes, we are still waiting for the propeller and shaft to come back from the machinist so that we can plug that big hole in the hull. I am waiting for the shaft with the new flanges before drilling the last engine-mount bolt holes. I want to make sure the drive-train is aligned as well as possible. Of course, once we get the hull wet, everything will move and I hope we will have enough freedom of movement to realign the engine and propeller shaft.

In other engine news, it is exciting to have some of the interfaces done. We have plumbed raw water feeds to both the Cummins engine and the Onan gen-set. We also have instruments for both installed in the charthouse and hooked up. Still needed are the battery hookups, throttle/shifter, and exhausts, well that, and, as describe before, the propeller shaft and engine mount bolts. I am also very excited to have finished the fuel system for both engine and gen-set. Fuel in the tanks can now go to and from the engines–but we have no way to put fuel in the tanks. That latter (important) capability is two more holes in the deck and is part of the upcoming cockpit project which also includes the throttle/shifter and bolting down of the steering gear. We briefly discussed the necessity of the throttle/shifter since we could have someone in the engine room and just shout commands–or ring bells as they did in the old days–but we broke down and bought a beautiful bronze Kobelt unit instead. The steering gear does need bolts because right now when the wheel is turned, the wheel turns sidewise and the rudder stays where ever it wants to be. Not the way to control a 29 ton vessel.

In addition to the engine instruments, we now have a ten-tank (Tank Tender) fuel gauge, lighting switches, and the best part, a Cruz Pro MaxVu110 multifunction instrument. With the cost of sailing instruments as high as they are, I expected to build my own multifunction display with an LCD and some microprocessors that I could program to display anything I wanted to see. It turns out that Cruz Pro already does this. So, rather than reinvent the wheel, we bought one and installed it. With all the instruments, the chart-house is starting to look like part of an operational boat.

The lack of surrounding water, because we are still in a boatyard in the desert, is the only real distraction from this illusion.

In life, you rarely get got where you are expecting it. Such was the case with my water fears. Despite the TV meteorologist’s proclamation that the danger from rain was over, the day after posting my “water tight” post, we had a little sprinkle. It was just enough to get Brenda and me running around with plastic sheets covering stuff. And then it stopped with the ground speckled with little wet spots where the drops had hit and everywhere in between was dry. Besides getting Brenda and my heart rates up, all the rain really accomplished was to take the very fine, even, invisible layer of soot from the next door cement trucks and turn that layer into a blotchy mess on all the cars and the Mahdee. Oh, and it re-confirmed that listening to the weather forecast is a waste of time.

Despite our apparent luck, we plodded forward with project “water tight,” along with all the other work to get Mahdee ready for re-launch. The deck is now better than ever and we were feeling pretty safe. Most of our belongings are in storage locations. One place has pretty limited access, so we rented a garage in a small apartment complex for storage with 24/7 access. We have had the garage for over a year, but it wasn’t really packed tight until we moved out of our apartment August 1st. Three days ago, we got a call that a water heater on the second floor had burst the night before. We rushed over and sure enough, lots of our stuff was soggy. We had been “got by water”, but where we least expected it. We knew the boat deck wasn’t yet sealed so we worked on that; the work shop leaks like a sieve; so we are really careful of what we put where and how thing are covered. The other storage unit looks like it has leaked in the past so we cover our stuff there, but the garage–it had proved safe and dry–until now.

We hauled the wet and soggy stuff to the boatyard so that we could lay it out in the blazing sun that has been relentless for 5 months now–this is the desert. And, for the last three days, it has been completely overcast with no sun. Not only is it proving very difficult to dry out the wet stuff, but my solar showers are suddenly not nearly so enjoyable.

Some good information has come to light as a result of this mini disaster. It turns out that the apartment building is up for sale, the past owner is suddenly not returning phone calls and the handy man tells us that the records show that no one is renting the garage we are in. We would have hated to have had the new owners cut off our locks and auction everything. As it is, we are pulled everything, not just the soggy stuff, out of that garage. We are disappointed because we had hoped to keep that garage for storage while we sailed the west coast. Apparently fate has a different plan. And if you are going to get got, you are going to get got. Water has an amazing ability to go places you least expect. Well its time to drill some more holes in the bottom of Mahdee so the water has someplace expected to go.