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Position N 27° 22.225’.
W 82° 37.075’.
Longboat Key Club Moorings, FL
September 15th 2012
Many people ask us “how we are doing on the boat?” Well, just fine,
in fact we really are passed comparing to our previous land lubber life of
house ownership and stuff. Last
evening we celebrated a good friend’s birthday and “how we are doing on the
boat?” came up “how are you coping with living in a small space?” also came up!
Well, again, just fine. The requirements for a comfortable life are actually
minimal and we have all those things on our 42’ boat. We have two full
bathrooms (heads), a master cabin with very comfortable bed, a guest cabin that
doubles as a den and office when guests are not on board (nearly all the time),
a small but adequate galley (kitchen) and a salon with sitting for six or
seven. The pilot house really doesn’t have a purpose when we are in port but
when at sea obviously becomes the most important area. It does have a seat that
converts to a large double bed. The boat deck and flying bridge area is our
vantage spot, not unlike an elevated deck or terrace area in a house it is also
the place to be to catch the breeze and we have a bimini top, sort of like an
umbrella on a patio, for shade. The aft covered deck is our ‘back porch’ where
we can sit in the shade while experiencing the outdoors watching a sunrise or
sunset or just gazing at the wake as we cruise. There is a table that will seat
up to six for al fresco dinning and we can enclose the area completely with
custom screens for comfort when we are in colder climes. Lastly, the foredeck
has a bench seat where we can sit while under way or to have our sundowners’ when
at dock. Equipment wise we have more conveniences than a house – we have a reverse
osmoses Watermaker which makes up to 500 gallons of great water a day, we have
a large generator so are never without the capability of making all the
electricity we need. All in all, as you can see, we have more than the basic
requirement we humans need for a comfortable life and all without having the grass
to cut! Of course there are other tasks to compensate like deck swabbing,
engine room maintenance, stainless steel polishing, varnishing the bright work
and polishing the hull and super structure to prevent fibreglass oxidation.
Plenty of jobs to compensate for not cutting the grass, don't you think? All of
them though, can be done with beautiful vistas in view and while visiting
exotic places, a definite plus.
As you can see from reading this blog drivel to own a boat certainly
a cruising boat, is a full time job thus the title of this entry; I’m also a
Realtor which makes big demands on my time too. Just keeping ‘Partners’ clean
and keeping up with the jobs related to the general weathering of things around
the boat is very time consuming. Take the aft deck table for instance, it is a
varnished circular drop leaf table and it sits in sun and rain plus a salt
laden atmosphere all the time. The time has arrived for it to be refinished.
Now remember the aft deck is the main entrance to the accommodations and the
boat deck above, it is a high traffic area and yet it is the work area of the
boat too. In the house we used to own we had a three car garage and two cars so
there was a constantly unoccupied work and storage area. If I was still there
and had the table refinishing project to hand I would simply set up the table
there and the materials needed and proceed to do the job. Every time a coat of
varnish went on about the only thing I would need to do would be to open the
garage door to ventilate. On ‘Partners’ however, it is a different story, I lay
out a large protective plastic sheet so that the teak decking is protected and
fetch the materials needed from their storage place and proceed to work. When
finished I pray it doesn’t rain! The materials are put away again and when dry
the table is folded and moved aside so we are able to transit the deck area
again. So, you can see that working in the elements affects the project and all
in all every job takes longer. I plan to put 13 coats of varnish on the table
so I will have to repeat the process that many times, all the time hoping a
coat is not ruined by an unexpected rain shower. Everything takes longer.
Washing the boat is a chore frequently undertaken as like any boat owner knows
birds like to roost in rigging and we have some. The birds, especially crows in
our marina, like the rigging as their roost. The sailing boats are first choice
with their multiple stanchions and spreader bars. Then cometh us! We have three
stanchions a mast and boom with block and tackle rigging so we offer similar
‘comforts’ to the birds, just not as tall as the sailing boats! After their
‘visit’ the boat deck needs cleaning which is always a chore. Many of us who
live aboard go outside at the time the birds swoop in to roost and try to make
sure they land on someone else’s boat by clapping and screeching to scare them
away, something a home owner would rarely if never do.
I discovered another tip to be passed on to other boat owners who
are marina bound and use the services of a diver. As I have mentioned before
sitting here in a marina in 90°F water causes much growth on the bottom of
‘Partners’. At the end of last month my diver came round to clean underwater.
The tip I am passing on is “don’t leave your A/C on”. I did and when doing my
usual engine room check shortly after he had finished to my horror discovered
the A/C sea strainer almost completely clogged with mud and slim which had been
sucked up into the strainer as soon as it was scrapped off the bottom; another
chore! Actually, I shouldn’t complain a bit as I am still able to carry out
most of the jobs on ‘Partners’ myself , climb vertical ladders to the flying
bridge and the engine room then contort to conform to the ‘yoga like’ positions
needed to carry out engine room tasks. The boating life is good for ones
physical health, at least if you do your own maintenance and cleaning.
Last night Friday we tried out the refinished table...six friends
came onboard for hors d'oeuvres and a drinks evening. The four ladies each contributed
and, of course, we ended up with too much food! All eight of us shared a
boating interest and the conversation was non-stop throughout, the stories just
kept on coming; at some points we were laughing so hard, my face, at least, was
aching and all of us had tears running down our cheeks! We had a really splendid
evening enjoying the slightly cooler, I should say less humid evenings that
mid September has brought enabled us to open the boat up and sit outside
comfortably. Somehow or other being on a boat with friends is always a happy
time, it was Saturday A.M. before we turned in...
I had decided some time ago that I would have the toilet system
overhauled before we went cruising and this was the week. George from Delmar
arrived this morning, I had been spurred on to call him as the vacuflush toilet
system we have in the forward master head had been cycling more frequently than
it should. There is a pump that creates a vacuum in a chamber so that when the
toilet is flushed it sucks the waste from the bowl to the holding tank. In
addition to the over cycling of the vacuum pump we had an odour! Yes, the
dreaded sewage odour, HT was not happy! Our vacuflush toilet is forward and the
mechanism, tank etcetera are below the master cabin floor in the forward bilge
section. George, who I knew, I had used him once before on our GB50 about 10
years ago, he has been in the toilet system maintenance business for about 20 years
here in the Sarasota area, arrived and went to work with me watching intently.
I wanted to learn as much as I could in case I had to perform maintenance while
we are cruising. George asked me when the system was last serviced; I shrugged
my shoulders and gave him a blank look. When the odour started I contacted Chet
the previous owner to find out if he had had a similar problem and had ever
serviced the system, his answer was no to both questions; the deduction from
this was that Chet bought the boat in 2003 and here we are now at the end of
2012 so if Chet didn’t work on it the system had been in service for at least
10 years without being touched! George was horrified and exclaimed! “Service
should be administered at 3 year intervals”, he said! Within 20 minutes George
had the whole Vacuflush tank out and had disassembled the pump which is
attached to it. He took it all out onto the dock, thank goodness, and proceeded
to dismantle the pump completely, thoroughly clean and service all components.
He ended up replacing the bellows inside the vacuum pump and scraped all the
crud from inside the vacuum tank about an hour later he was ready to reassemble
the parts. He did also replace one piece of hose that was ‘sweating’ and
obviously was a source of some of the odour, a hole in the vacuum pump bellows
was the main culprit, however. I gave him a hand to hose out the bilge area and
give it all a good clean. George still felt that the vent pipe going from the
holding tank to the starboard side of the hull would need replacing and was
part of the odour problem and more than likely would need a new vent fitting on
the outside of the hull. The hull fittings are made from ‘pot’ metal and have a
limited life span. When corrosion sets in the vent fitting simply blocks itself
with corrosion. The problem was that George did not have time on this visit due
to another appointment and ‘to boot’ was going on vacation for three and a half
weeks to Europe. He offered for me to have someone else complete the job but I
agreed to wait for his return. So, in conclusion the toilets are working fine
and the odour is almost nonexistent, not quite though, so I’m hoping the vent
pipe replacement will fix that. To warn any of you who own a KK42 that may
experience the necessity to replace a vent pipe on your toilet system, it ain't
easy and requires major disassembly of the master bed and the storage under to
get at the pipe, it, again helps to be proficient in advanced yoga!
That is all for now...
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