May 6, 2014 Preparing the boat

I have made plenty of lists.  Now it’s time to get into action.  I sent a couple e-mails this morning with information about leaving our boat (from my phone, which I hate to type anything lengthy, but that is our wifi connection when we’re on the boat in this marina). 

We ran the water maker to fill our tanks.  Then we “pickled” the system.  You have to run sterile water through the lines if you aren’t going to use them for awhile.  Dave says the mixture is the same thing he used to use to wash beer bottles when he was  making his own beer. 

Dave was in the bilge looking for parts he needed to replace in the forward head.  He figured he could store them in the bilge because it wouldn’t matter if they got wet.  While we were in there, we decided to store more items in the bilge.  We ziploc bagged things first.  Then we stored boxed wine (sorry, but they are easy to have on a boat), and different cooking oils under our floor boards.  If they broke open, at least the liquids would be contained.  I have made of list of what I store where on the boat.  It’s not like I can open a cupboard door to see what I have.  We have an app on our phone called “what’s on my boat”.  Now I just need to load it :)  It’s not like you can run to the store to pick up an ingredient.  It’s interesting to try to figure out what you want to stock the boat with and how many you think you should have on board. 

After Dave replaced the parts needed in the forward head, he replaced the gasket on one of our port hatches.  It took 2 hours to remove the old gasket and place the new one.  During this time, Thomas brought over the videos and photos he took of Peter singing at the jam session a couple weeks ago.  We gave him a  tour of our boat.  He said he could never let his wife see our boat, because she would want a bigger boat. 

Our friend, Miami, came over to check out how to access our bilge and where our through hulls are located.  If the boat starts taking on water while we are gone, he will check out where it could be coming in.  Otherwise, he is just going to watch that nothing goes missing.  Really, this is a pretty safe place to leave a boat.  He doesn’t think we have anything to worry about.  But this is the first time we are leaving our home and everything we now own.  Strange feeling, especially for Dave.  He hasn’t left the boat for more than 2 nights since we moved aboard in October 2013.