Brunswick, GA
November 1 - 16, 2024
For the first time in a long time, I do not feel the pinch of a schedule. It has been pleasant to work on projects without having the crunch of a hard deadline. Utopia is cruising ready, yet there are several items to work on now that the boat is back in the water. We have been following a checklist provided by the prior owner that contains some items are related to the haulout while other tasks are part of an annual maintenance schedule. We’d like to knock off most of these tasks before leaving the marina after Christmas.
We still have been maintaining a work schedule, only our commute to work is very, very short. We work on boat chores nearly all day long and now that we are not in the boat yard, we are not forced to take a weekend break. Finally last Sunday, we both felt the need for a break from boat projects so we took the afternoon off and attended a community event taking in Brunswick. It was a much needed break.
Here is a rundown of projects that we can recall that we worked on since October 31:
Finished washing fenders (I was washing fenders in March when I twisted my ankle).
Starlink installation
Rigging
Placed mainsail & stack pack back on boom. Unfortunately, we did this without inserting the battens first. It was a challenge to put them in after the sail was up on the boom.
We could not attach the sail to the outhaul until the sail was properly flaked. During a low wind moment, we raised the sail to insert the batten and was able to flake the sail upon lowering it and pull the clew to the outhaul ring.
I thought it would be a good idea to swap the ends of the mainsheet around to change the wear points, however, I was unable to feed the “other” end of the sheet into the clutch. I guess years of it being outside tied in knot let it “fluff” out. Once I turned the line back around, the line into the clutch, although with a fair amount of tugging. I did learn something about our Lewmar clutch though. The knot used to pull the line through the clutch needs to be on top of the line (at 12 o’clock and not at 3 or 9 o’clock) since the rings in the clutch are somewhat oval in a vertical orientation.
Lewmar clutch configuration (from https://www.lewmar.com/content/dc2-rope-clutches) Ran the reef lines back to cockpit clutches but forgot to attach them to the sail while it was raised. We’ll need to finish this during the next light wind project day.
Set up the staysail sheet and ran through it through the cockpit clutch.
Dinghy
Installed the dinghy davits.
Lowered dinghy from the deck into the water and hung it on the davits.
Washed inside of fuel locker and sprayed with anti-mold.
Tried to install seat, but dinghy needs to be deflated. Will do this when I pull it down for a bath.
Replaced old, corroded navigation light fixture on the bow with a brand new one.
Washed under non-slip flooring at helm.
Installed cockpit table.
Washed dodger windows, added protectant, placed sun shades on dodger windows.
Installed Bimini curtains.
Attempted to replace missing enclosure snaps, but missing parts and tools; now ordered.
Greased dodger enclosure snaps.
Water/sewer
Water system flushing. Eventually found the air leak which came from a filter cartridge. Added plumbing tape and air leak has been resolved.
The forward head was not pulling in flushing water. It turns out that when I gave the head a deep clean last spring, I installed the gasket backwards. Now that it is correctly installed, the Lavac works like a charm.
Found leak at hot water heater. The local hardware store did not have parts for our type of plumbing, so we rode the marina bikes to Lowes (four miles from the marina), but they also did not have proper fittings. Jimmy eventually found some online from an RV supplier. We'll be without hot water until the parts arrive and we get them installed.
Ground tackle updates
Purchased and assembled new secondary anchor. Was not able to place it on the anchor roller. It will be installed on the stern rail later. For now, it sits in the anchor locker.
Removed CQR from the bow roller and advertised it “free to a good home” on the marina’s Facebook page. It still sits on our finger pier.
Installed new swivel onto the primary anchor.
Serviced windlass.
Set up aeration mat under master berth mattress.
Improved and updated haulout spreadsheet.
Made updates to our website. It is recommended that you refresh each page you visit to make sure the updates load. We tweaked things on each page. Within the blogs, each post is now numbered (this post is #46 in 2024, hence the "24-46" in the title). Each blog post has links to the previous and next post so now one can easily read them in either forward or backwards order. There is also now a page dedicated to our Appalachian Trail hike.
The projects will be slowing down due to several road trips that we have coming up. Both Jimmy and I are really looking forward to sharing some cruising posts again one day.
24-46
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