Four Months…

In Four Months I’ll be 40 years old

In Four Months we will be unemployed

In Four Months we will be preparing our house for rental and preparing our boat to be a home

In the next 120 days, we need to finalize as many boat projects as we can, offload as much of our “stuff” as we can, wrap up as much of our work projects to be handed off as we can.

I’m not sure we can get it all done in time, but as far as boat projects, I’m prioritizing as much as I can into getting safety equipment acquisition and/or installs completed, sailing equipment upgraded to make handling easier, and addressing a few small remaining issues with the way everything was installed before we owned Mobert.

I’m convinced more than ever now that we will have project materials/parts/tools on board when we depart, for installation or completion at a later time.  I’ve also realized that this is okay, and that it is, in fact, more common than not.

So what have I been up to?

I ordered our Delorme (now Garmin) InReach device for position tracking and communications.  I’ve been finalizing my list of spare parts of the engine, generator, autopilot, pumps, electrical systems, dinghy, etc so that we can resolve issues ourselves if/when they happen.   Three more large orders and I’ll have that complete.

I realized our boat doesn’t have smoke or CO detectors, so I found a setup I think will work well and ordered the parts.   I have not yet installed them yet but I plan to install one of these in each cabin and they wirelessly communicate so if the Vberth unit (for example) detects CO, it alerts you (with voice) on the other 2 at the same time.

I replaced the bow thruster batteries and the genset start battery, which completes all of the battery replacements.

I fixed the broken ignitor on the BBQ, and upgraded to electronic ignition  (hey the BBQ is important!)

I got the life raft re-certified, and then I made a tie-down harness for the hydrostatic release mechanism.

And through the winter I’ve been slowly working on the Dinghy in our garage.   I added a depth sounder (Raymarine WiFish) to scope out anchorages and passages before we take our big boat in.  It doesn’t have a display, it sends its data over WiFi to your phone or tablet and can be used with Navionics charting.  As part of that project I added a battery switch (the dinghy has an electric start motor so it already had a battery, but no switch), moved the tie downs for the gas tank and battery to be more under the seat and less in the way of people’s feet, and secured the fuel line and battery cables along the edge of the floor rather than loose down the middle getting caught underfoot.

Lots left to do though….