Closer to splash

The past few weeks we have been busy getting Cupcake prepared launch day. It looks like she will be ready to go in the drink in about a week. She has been in a big work-shed at the boatyard for several weeks. Exciting at first, but now I'd really prefer to have her out of that gloomy, dirty environment and in the water where she belongs. Also, we took everything off the boat last fall: cushions, mattress, gear, supplies...everything. And it is all in the basement, the barn, the garage. We can't wait to put it all back onboard to see how low Cupcake will sit in the water. (Remember, she is built for comfort, not for speed.)

Before she left our yard, I got her surveyed (passed with flying colors) and insured. I mostly finished the sink installation in the head. Just need to do a bit of caulking and then the head will be ready for the composting toilet.

The guys at the boatyard have been working on installing the water maker (very glad I outsourced that complicated task). And they have been finishing up some punch list items that were left-over from last fall's rudder and steering work. The steering is still very stiff, so they need to get to the bottom of that issue. And the wheel-brake has not worked right since we got the boat, even though the brake shoes were replaced last fall. 

In other news, I've been working on some interior projects like varnishing the floorboards. They were never varnished on the bottoms or edges so this spring seemed like a good time to give them a thorough coating on all six sides. While the floorboards were all up and out I tidied up some of the wiring in the bilges. Ellen and I also evaluated what durable, long-term provisions we will keep down there.

Got the new hanging baskets installed. Ellen's design. Very smart. Also put in those neat LED strip lights. They are bright bright bright. Hopefully they are also durable. And put in a new teak overhead piece in the galley to hold up the baskets, strip light, and fan. Used toggle switches. I love toggle switches and think it is because they were used in the first car I ever loved.

Side note (perhaps the first cruising tip of the day): 1/4" teak plywood is not cheap but boy does it make a boat interior look nice. Easy to cut drill and shape, smells great. Good stuff. Over the years I've replaced just about every plastic/vinyl/icky flat piece in the boat with teak ply. The only remaining pieces are a few wall/overhead pieces in the aft-cabin that Moss says she likes. No accounting for taste.

And in a day or so I will have the new/used winch, clutch, and deck organizer ready for the new reefing lines I ran in the boom this winter. I have just about had it with drilling and epoxying and sanding and drilling for the time being. There will be another opportunity for that itchy sticky fun when I source one more set of rope clutches for the starboard side. Port is for reef lines #1 and #2 as well as the vang line. Starboard will be for main halyard, sheet, and outhaul. I've been plotting this change for about five years. We will see how it works.

The starboard winch is a two-speed Lewmar 30 self-tailing. This winter I got a decent deal on a pair of used Harken 16 single-speed self-tailing winches. One is for the reef and vang side, the plan for the second one is to install it on the mast to make hauling the dinghy on deck a simpler task: one person grinds the winch, the other person manages the dinghy as it comes up or goes down. Neither of the winches on the mast right now is self-tailing but both are two-speed 16s. I am a little concerned that a single-speed 16 won't be enough mechanical advantage, so Ellen needs to start taking her biceps, triceps, quadriceps, and hexaceps seriously.

Last week I pulled the swim ladder off the transom. Yesterday I peeled the name and port of call off, tried to get the rust stains out of the fiberglass, buffed, and measured for the new name. Met with the sign guy today and he says the new name vinyl (two-color) will be ready by the weekend. That's important because I'd prefer not to install it when Cupcake is in the water.

The old girl (Cupcake, not Ellen) looks so naked without her name. Check out her big three blade propellor. If we ever decide to switch to a lobster boat, we will have the perfect prop.

Finally, I've got the new Dyer (Moon Cracker) just about ready for the season. We will try to have her in the water by the weekend so we have some watercraft in the ocean for Memorial Day. In Maine we use a hard-dinghy. These Dyers are the perfect tenders for New England. But when we head south we will leave our little fiberglass friend behind and take the rubber dinghy. (Check out Moss installing the gunwale guard. Maximum efficiency means using two screwdrivers at once.)

Ellen has been hard at work sewing covers for the cockpit cushions. They look marvelous. Next up: sun-cover for the 5hp outboard.

Oh. I've also been going to work and all that. Things seem to be winding down at the office so I ought to have a good bit of June and most of July to get even more stuff done on Cupcake.

Big doings

Anyone familiar with the children's book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" will understand how things are going aboard Cupcake lately.

We decided to take a good look at the head since we are going to install the composting toilet. That led to Ellen scraping, priming, (and soon painting) the walls. 

Then we took a look at the sink in there. She hates the sink, so after two days working with a flat pry bar, we got the sink out. And destroyed the veneer on the countertop. Looks like a new countertop and sink are coming. That means I really need to readdress the plumbing for the sink drain.

The light over the sink needs to be replaced too.

And so it goes.

We also uncovered the boat last week. It sure is nice to be able to move around the deck without dealing with the canvas cover and its supports. The solar panels are doing great. You can see Ellen (with the Atlantic Ocean in the background) on the phone, making things happen.

Finally, the main cabin is in utter disarray (don't kid yourself, the v-berth and aft-cabin are also chaotic). I'm replacing teak over the sink, rewiring pumps and lights, reinforcing the stove's latching system (it would gimbal whether we wanted it to or not before), reinforcing lazarette hatches, adding polyurethane to the floorboards, and on and on. It's tons of fun and I mean that sincerely.

Spring projects

The optimist in me says we are done with snow and ice for the season. That tidbit of information means Cupcake's crew won’t see winter again until December 2019. I can’t describe how happy that fact makes me feel. Not a fan of the cold. Or the ice. Or the snow. Or the not-sailing.

Yesterday Ellen and I got onboard and started moving on some projects that need to happen before the end of April when Cupcake gets hauled to the boatyard for the water maker installation.

We decided to go with a composting head, so after not nearly enough research we bought an Airhead at the Maine Boatbuilders Show last weekend. Yesterday we pulled all the nasty nasty old plumbing off the boat in preparation. I can’t wait to be free from stink and clogs and leaks. Not to mention becoming a law-abiding, non-discharge kind of citizen. The photo of the removed hoses and valves does not do justice to the unpleasantness of the task. Every hose was disgusting to see, to touch, and to smell. Every hose clamp was either covered with brown rust or dried poop or both. Our anti-siphon valve had been allowing a fine mist of aerosolized fecal matter to spray all over the bulkhead in one of our lockers for about a season. Lovely.

The other exciting springtime step is that we wound and set the ship’s clock. It runs for a week at a time, so we committed to getting onboard at least weekly to get stuff done and to wind the clock this spring. If everything goes according to plan (and really, what doesn’t go according to plan on a boat) the clock will stay running until the fall of 2019 when the boat is hauled at the end of our adventure. That’s pretty exciting stuff. (The brown on this bulkhead is just teak. Don't panic.)

Busy busy

Let's see. I've been a busy sailor the past few weeks. Got a used winch at one of those marine salvage places (oh my goodness are those places fun AND depressing: so many wonderful parts, so many dead boats). Rebuilt it so now it is ready for duty on the port-side cabin top where it will help out with the mainsail reefing.

May 2018 update: I didn't like the look of the pawls in the winch when I got it apart, so I parlayed it (and some cash) into a pair of healthy Harken 16 self-tailing winches.

And yesterday Ellen helped me get the boom onto a pair of sawhorses so I could figure out the lines that run inside. Man, off the boat the boom seems enormous. Working from the initially-inexplicable jiffy-reefing diagram I found on the Isomat Spars website, I figured out how to rig the lines for two reef points. It's a neat system, hopefully it will work smoothly because it will be really wonderful to be able to reef from the comfort and safety of the cockpit.

Making sawdust

So there's not a ton of work I can do aboard Cupcake when the weather is cold. Instead, I've been picking away at little projects I can take care of in my workshop. 

It may seem like a small thing, but I finished a little spice rack for the galley. It holds 10 jars, is made of teak and cedar, and it gets the job done. Side note: the cedar is from a tree I cut and milled myself. Very Little House on the Prairie.

The other little project I wrapped up over the weekend is an innovation of which I am very proud. For years I've wanted a way to have a vise aboard the boat. But I didn't want to take up a whole lot of space with one and I didn't know how to mount it so I could have a stable platform and still move the vise around when I need. 

This year I realized that a traditional bench vise was big and cumbersome, even a small one. So I got this drill press vise and mounted it on the underside of a storage bin lid. This lid is the one that covers the space where the refrigerator compressor lives, so the space taken up by the vise is otherwise wasted. I'm hopeful the trip will go so smoothly there won't be a need to use the vise, but now I've got one if it's needed.

(The extra holes in the lid could be seen as a measuring error. I choose to think of them as a different mounting option.)

Bleak

On Sunday Ellen and I dropped the new fabric for the cushions off at the prison. Moss wasn't available but wanted to see what the prison looked like. You can see from the picture that there is not much in this world more bleak and dreary than a prison in the winter.

In Maine, February lasts for at least two months: February and so-called March. So settle down, lay in a good supply of firewood, and spend this time studying the navigation charts because there is not much that can be done on the boat. (WeatherUnderground is predicting 10-12 inches of snow on Wednesday.)

Moss wants to talk about choosing the fabric so I'll leave that to her. What I will mention is that our first boat (Cupcake) was a 1960s Pearson and its upholstery was period-correct vinyl. Our second cruising boat was a 1970s Tartan (Cupcake) and it had period-correct brown plaid. This Cupcake had period-correct blue velour but we are shaking things up with 1990s-style ultra suede. ULTRA suede. Like suede, but much more ultra.

Courtesy flag

We are starting to collect gear for the trip. Here's Moss with the Bahamas courtesy flag. It's nice to think that a year from now the flag will be flapping in the tradewinds. Today it sits in a box. The weather is cold and snowy here.

Prison bound

Yesterday Ellen and I got all the cushions from Cupcake's cabin off the boat and into the truck. This morning we delivered them to the Maine Correctional Center in Windham for new upholstery and foam. The cushions were original to the boat (that's 32 years of getting sat upon by sailors) and have lost some of their bounce. Also, they all have buttons sewn into them and those buttons catch on bathing suits. It's never a good time to have your bathing suit yanked by an old button. 

So we will have fresh cushions in a month or so. It's interesting to consider that the upholstery is being done by people with almost no freedom to go where they like. But the cushions (as well as the boat and crew) are privileged to roam wherever in the world we desire.

First post

Ok, in the interest of getting something started on the website and blog, I'll jump right in. The first picture is from 2016 of the Cupcake Cup (annual dinghy race we host in Freeport). Gratuitous boat shot.

The second picture is the mattress for the v-berth. It's got the mattress pad that Ellen tailored to fit the triangle. She also sewed up a fitted comforter, two sets of cotton sheets and a third in flannel. The flannel isn't exactly what we need for the Bahamas, but it will be a treat on chilly summer nights in Maine.