Decided to take USCG Captain Course this winter. Thanks to TrueCourse, will have my Masters in a couple weeks.
General
Upgrades 2020
Been awhile since I posted. Going into 2020 have a long list of items:
- AC Upgrades : inverter, charger etc
- Replace Teak Deck
- Redo all railings.
- More to come
Boat Parade 2017
Moving on up. Got 2nd Place this year, but they didn’t handout trophies.
Getting Ready!!
New Mast Feature
Almost Ready
Showtime
The Winner – I wanted a recount
Flydeck Railings
One of our big projects this summer was fixing our upper railings. I found a great local carpenter that worked with me and he did an awesome job.
Pre-Fit Railing
Old vs New
All Done – Nice and Shiny
Our First Lighted Boat Parade – July 4th
What we learned from out first lighted boat parade:
1. You can never have enough lights.
2. You need to get too close for Barb’s comfort to the 65′ boat in front.
3. The little “go fast” boats that want follow and dart in between are annoying and should be sunk (joking?)
4. A little 18′ can win when it dresses up light a sailboat.
5. I really do not like finishing out of top 3
6. We need a MUCH BIGGER horn (and maybe a signal cannon)
7. Red, White and blue makes Purple. Need more white lights.
8. Our generator can run for a couple hours (had not run that long yet)
9. People really really liked Bill’s boat (he came in #2)
10. Going to start shopping for more lights for next year.
How to Rebuild A Bimini Frame
Barb, I and most likely Ray V will be figuring this out over the weekend. After our longest cruise to date (3 hr) last weekend and Barb’s resulting sunburn, we decided to accelerate that on the “Fix It List”. Thanks to Sailrite.com, we will be receiving many parts via UPS today. We wont have to bend any bows or corners, just cut and pop rivet. We have all the canvas from the original full enclosure, but the frames did not survive the collapse. The biggest challenge will be getting it just right so all the side pieces will fit (not that we will use right away, but don’t want prevent us from using in the future).
This is the before, let’s see how the “To Be” ends up looking…..
Railing Repair Continues
Front Railings repaired by the Wooden Boat Shop in Cincinnati (http://woodenboatshop.com/). Great work by Butch to repair the busted rails. Finishing almost done on the rest of lower railings
We Have a Name
Had a nice enough day to put on the Liberty Nameboards.
Mast Repair
Started another project this week, Mast Repair. Being the tallest thing on the trawler, the mast took quite a hit when the slip roof collapsed. When I got the boat, pieces of radar, lights, etc. where zip tied and hanging off the mast. Some pieces of wood had been epoxied back and the boom was in two pieces. The spreader (solid teak or mahogany) was in two pieces.
For the spreader, I decided to skip the wood and fabricated two pieces of 3/4″ starboard. I found out AFTER I started, that you can’t glue starboard, so the two layers are screwed together. Here are some before and after.
Here is the current progress:
Short Break in Weather Expected
It looks like 60’s in Cincinnati this weekend.
I think plan will be to de-winterize engine and take Liberty out onto the Ohio River for first time.
Not too far…just to get Barb out on the boat. Will need to re-do engine winterizing when we are done. Hopefully no ice will remain to mess me up this time.
