Working down the Checklist

A good sailor know how to swab!

As any good engineer, I have a checklist of chores to do around the boat.  Sometimes it gets so good (or bad) that I have lists of my checklists!  One of the major items we wanted to do this winter is to get the canvas all around the sundeck and the flybridge re-stitched.  Over the years, the UV light degrades the thread around the zippers and the Eisenglass, so about every 3-5 years, they need some work.  Additionally, we had some juveniles around the boat last summer who really tore up what was already fragile.

I couldn’t find a canvas contractor in the Orlando/Sanford area, but found one in Daytona Beach (an hour away) who would do the work if we brought the canvas to her.  Now, taking down this much canvas is not something you do just for fun.  The last time we did it was in August 2012 as we prepared for a hurricane to hit us in the New Orleans area.  It takes about a day to take it all down, and another day to clean all the algae and mildew off of it.  And after it’s all repaired, it takes another day to re-hang it all.  And when you try to zip and snap it all together, you’d think a sadist designed & assembled it originally.  We have to wait for a warm day when the canvas will stretch to make it all fit.  So, we entertained ourselves for the better part of a week on this task.

My Admiral disappeared into the
bowels of the boat!

The other major project was to remove, clean, and re-bed the stainless side handrails along the main deck.  As we removed the rails, it was obvious that they had never been re-bedded during the 27-year life of the boat.  Normally, one would re-bed outdoor hardware every 5-10 years to prevent water leaks.  So as I start unscrewing the first handrail, I find that I’m working on a machine bolt that must have a nut on the other end.  Great!  Now I have to find where in the heck the other end is.  After unloading everything in the storage compartments under the seating on the flybridge, we find all the nuts (which are metric, of course).  And just because you can see most of the bolts & nuts, that doesn’t mean that you can REACH them!  Sue had to climb into some cubby-holes that we didn’t know existed.

Along the lines of wildlife entertainment, for the second straight day, our girlfriend landed on the piling right next to the boat to show off.  She is only 3' away from the stern of the boat, so we get some really good views of her.  She matches exactly the pictures in our guide book:  a female Anhinga in her breeding colors (we call her ol' blue eyes).  You can't see the white stripes on her wings, but they look really colorful.

Our friendly "snake bird"

Anhingas are also called "snake birds" because they swim very low in the water & all you see is the neck looking like a snake.  They dive under the water for long distances to catch fish, and actually fly with their wings under water.  They are not an oily bird, so their feathers get water-logged & they must spend a lot of time with their wings spread to let the sun dry them.  We’ve seen lots of them from the Gulf Coast all along Florida.