More Fun in the Maintenance Department

I look like I'm at a Star Wars/construction worker convention.

Lest you think that it's been all crab legs and white wine aboard Bettie lately, let me give you a run through of all the stuff we've been doing to get the boat ready to leave in April.

We've had one of the most respected riggers in the area come by to give us an assessment of all the standing rigging (stainless steel wires that hold up the mast), turnbuckles, chainplates, etc. Much to our delight, he said that he couldn't see anything that worried him. Boat owners never hear stuff like that! The standing rigging is in good shape and full of redundancies, which may be bad in writing but are very good when it comes to keeping the mast in a vertical position. He said for peace of mind, we might consider replacing the upper shrouds (those are the top wires that support the mast at the sides of the boat), and we're thinking about that as well as having a long piece of Spectra, a type of incredibly strong synthetic rope, as a backup in case any of our standing rigging breaks.

Vlad rebedded the windless, putting an end the leak that was plaguing us, and we got rid of the rusty anchor chain that kept depositing piles of rust specks all over the deck and chain locker. Tomorrow, it's fun with 3M's 4000 UV marine sealant on the toerail to protect the 5200 we already put down. (There's been some debate on this because once you go 5200 you never go back. However, Vlad contacted 3M via email, and they said to use 5200 on the toerail as did other boat manufacturers that he researched. I'm sure I'll be crying about this later as we try to, oh, so carefully separate the toerail from the deck using a grinder.)

Bettie was starting to look a little rough paint wise, so I've been attempting to make her look all purdy. Did I mention that I'm really bad at painting? Don't be fooled by the photos. There is a lot of touching up still to do.

The bathroom before paint.

The bathroom post paint. And, yes, there's another shell light!