After packing up and leaving Peoria the previous day, I arrived in Deltaville this past Wednesday night. Bear was right where I left her, awaiting my return.
Bear just waiting to come out of hibernation.
I spent Thursday and Friday thoroughly cleaning the interior, moving things aboard, and planning some jobs. The preparations – measuring, learning, organizing, and, above all else, ordering – is often more difficult for me than the actual work, or at least a lot more frustrating.
After two days, Bear was as clean as she will get for several weeks.
Saturday was cold and rainy, so I took the opportunity to do some grocery and hardware shopping and get some of my online work completed in the comfort of a warm coffee shop. Between the miserable weather, the long list of tasks ahead, and the difficulties of arranging all the moving parts to get the work done in a timely fashion with as little hassle as possible, I was a bit depressed.
Despite waking up and seeing my breath in the v-berth and a good 25-knot northerner blowing across the river just outside, things began to look up today. I finally started to get down to actual boat work. And, what’s more, the sun was shining bright, which meant it was only a matter of time before the shrink-wrap created a greenhouse effect underneath.
After moving the groceries and supplies from the car to the boat, I removed our sink once again so that I could get at the thru-hull, which we are replacing, that lives in the cabinet underneath. And with some serious effort, I removed the seacock, though not the actual thru-hull.
The sink came off easily with just the silicone, not at all like the first time, a two-day ordeal removing the 5200-like caulk that the factory used on everything.
I also emptied out the lazarette in anticipation of some work in there. Now that we moved to a new, much smaller refrigerator compressor last summer, we would like to mount the compressor on the bulkhead, getting it out of the way and opening up some additional space. In addition, I will be cleaning up and putting a layer of epoxy on our big starboard lazarette shelf, which has some water damage that predates us. Finally, we want to better secure the anchors we store in the lazarette and make a place to securely store the Sail-Rite.
Our new compressor, taking up about an eighth of the space of our old one…and drawing one-tenth the amps.
After working on the boat until it just started to warm up around one, I had to leave everything, shower up, and run some errands. I return the rental car Monday, which will make everything a bit more difficult, so I wanted to do what laundry I have and get some final supplies. I also needed to get my weekly grading done for my online courses. But even with the short day, I was just happy to get started on some work. It did not take too long before I could see some progress and make a much clearer plan for moving forward. What’s more, while the weather will still be in the upper 40s for the next couple days, it looks like Thursday is going to be in the sixties and there is nothing lower than that in the long-range forecast. Things are looking up!