Victory at sea

Posted on by Schooner Mahdee under misc, News

OK, on land…

The stove works! Last night 11 pm we had our first fire in the Shipmate stove. Seems the newly-cast firebricks didn’t break and we’re still here so the boat didn’t burn down 🙂

Of course, all the paraffin-based lube/sealant we’d put on the stove to keep it from rusting slowly “smoked” off and the boat smelled like way too many candles burning. Yuck. We had to keep a couple port holes open to clear that paraffin smoke once it started.

With Brenda feeding stovebox periodically all night, we had a fire until about 5:00 am when we ran out of wood…and Brenda didn’t feel like going out into the wet, cold morning to get more scraps of hardwood from our scrap-wood pile.

Christmas Cold…burrrrrrr

Posted on by Schooner Mahdee under photos, Projects, Systems

We spent Christmas in our normal range of daily pursuits–starting and finishing projects on Mahdee. We worked very hard in week before Christmas to get the wood burning stove installed so we could have a warm, cosy fire for the holiday. However, it wasn’t to be. The rain made it very difficult to do the “outside” parts of the project. The cold made it difficult for the glue to “go off” and dry, too.

Pics taken in the last week or so include David installing the metal for around the stove and making the hole in the deck for the stove pipe.

metal

Ceiling 1

deck mark 1

The stove was hard to get into place since it weighs almost 400 lbs; Beamer had been sleeping under it while it sat in the middle of the galley. While we moved it, he had to “relocate” to his old sleeping place in the storage areas under the bed in the stateroom.

Kitty