Sailing Vessel Karma

One month in & we have continued to be about ready to almost maybe next week gain a massive amount of momentum to slingshot us into the sea

Today we had a celebratory Molesons for slapping a 2 part epoxy primer on the donut. The hull is made of steel and it is faired heavily above the water line with an epoxy fairing. There were spider cracks in the fairing so the previous owners (PO) grinded them down to investigate the steel. No issues apart from the now scarred and scary looking hull. This is to be faired back with standard epoxy fairing (…polyester perhaps) or thickened epoxy which is what we used. Thirty bucks for 12 buck(et)s of filler from the lovely Romeo’s crew, many layers of leftover epoxy from the POs which survived just to end of the project before expiring, and a sander lent by our landlords had the job wrapped up. The donut is the eye sore starboard side up front. Even outside the massive tent, this donut is the first thing anyone sees.

We have kind of a sweet gig right now.

The boat is in a tent so we can work in the rain out of the sun. There’s less bugs in the tent we hear and since we have so much painting to do this actually rocks. The POs left a table saw, a chop saw, ladders, tables, shop vacs, and what feels like a Mary Poppins fun bag full of hardware store vom alongside a lumber yard.

What bliss it is to work on projects with tools beyond an oscillator with dull blades. The yard fee is already paid through the summer. We have a casual rental agreement with a local sailor and enjoy hot showers every night. My 1986 car (the boat is also 1986) escorts us to the yard just 5 minutes away and to Greco for $5.49 CAD 1/4 lb Donairs every Wednesday.

Our days have become extremely standard apart from a weird 3 ish day hiatus where my body decided to be hollow and try to lay me to rest. I was basically immobile without thoughts or appetite for 36 hours but that is in the past and we are friends once again. A few days after I would simply lay around the boat for 10 minutes after 5 minutes stints of boat jobs and or standing upright. The camp and stadium chairs left by the POs were heavily utilized for those few days.

So we wake up when we wake up which is around 9. Coffee and scanning for goods on FB marketplace or project research accompanies breakfast. We get to the boat by 10 or 11. Gawk at the boat for a bit and check out the fairing on the hull. Or find something new to install in one of the boxes under the boat. Chat with fellow boaters and the yard workers throughout the day. Ping pong between jobs, perhaps finishing one to completion every say 6 days. Eat the half sandwich that we packed. Realize it’s dark because we are cold, or as its warming up lately, because someone mistakenly checks their watch. Go home around 9 or 10. Sometimes 8. First person showering usually makes dinner. Chat about projects. Put on an audio book (recently Salty by Loni Calloway which is just superb) and sleep hard until our bodies let us wake up.

We have gone on a few lil road trips to retrieve boat items. My car Beulah drove us all the way from Sonora Mexico to Shediac New Brunswick with zero issues but when we drove around Shediac, he lost the brake booster valve (lame little plastic part we plugged instead with electrical tape and a bottle cap), and he started to show serious parasitic draw. The brake booster taps in the engine’s vacuum to assist braking but turns out the car stalls quite easily if there is no vacuum. So the car would die when we stopped at stop signs. Once that was sorted, the parasitic draw came to center stage. Small electrical things like the gas and temp gauge would stop working and the lights dim, the car wouldn’t start again and the battery would read like 10V. Thankful for its manual transmission…

Halifax 3 hours away promised a nice gimballed marine stove and we trekked and made it to the rendezvous after roll starting the car many times and twice in traffic. We fixed some wiring in the Canadian Tire parking lot and slapped a new battery in which got us home. Along with the stove!

Turns out, the stove was not a propane stove but a kerosene stove. Our boat and our expensive fiberglass propane tanks which fit perfectly on the boat are supremely set up for propane but we are so stoked on the kerosene stove now and will be installing it nonetheless. We’ve teflanned and tightened and plugged holes on the stove and tested it out with some $3 samosas from “No Frills,” our new fav store and product that surely has mislabeled pricing. Kerosene is very nifty. It lasts forever far as we can tell, isn’t flammable as a liquid, when it does turn gaseous, the flammable vapors ascend unlike propane which hangs out in the bilge, and there’s suuuch tradition with it. Amundson used his Primus on his journey to the south pole, Norgay and Hillary summited with one, the Hiscocks used this fuel as they racked up miles on their 30′ sloop, and Gypsy Moth was equipped with the Primus 535 stove which sailed the world with lonesome Chichester. Time will tell if the fuel source will we readily available round the world but one burner uses about pint every 8 hours so at least we won’t need much.

Oh we also saw Canadian legend Avril Lavigne in nearby Moncton, NB when our kind rentees (if we are the renters then they are the rentees no?) had a few extra tickets for the Greatest Hits Tour. A random side quest so different from the daily routine