Projects

After nearly a year of gathering moss, Convivia and her crew are overcoming inertia and getting ready to cruise again. This week, we took advantage of the public holiday and school break and got Convivia out of the river and onto her anchor. Before we could do that though, there were a number of boat-list items that needed to be knocked off. Dodger repair Our dodger was hit hard during the big hail storm. Several large holes were punched in the old, brittle, windshield panes. We couldn’t go anywhere without fixing them. Unfortunately, this was a much larger task than it seemed at first blush. The old Sunbrela was worn out, and even if we could have salvaged it, the hardware was installed over the plexiglass, and the zippers were shot. The upshot was that the whole frame had to be remade. ...

I’ve always been a pay it forward kind of guy. I love helping my friends out and I love to build community. Every once in a while I ask for help, and every time it’s hard. I don’t fully understand why, but I do know that I am distinctly averse to receiving generosity. This past week has been a learning experience for me. It started, I think, when the lights started to flicker. We nursed our failing batteries all the way across the South Pacific but when we got to Bundaberg we just let it go. By the time we arrived in Brisbane they were near dead. Then a few nights before Christmas, when Ceildyh was over for dinner they died for good. We were eating and making merry and the whole boat went dark and silent. I switched us over to the starter battery and we finished the night with light (but no music). The next morning Evan called to let me know that he could help out with some old (but hopefully not as dead as our batteries). Then the sink fell in… ...

For the last year or so Victoria and I have been harboring a secret desire. We hoped to combine our love of coffee and our new nomadic lifestyle and create from the union a more perfect coffee. Over the last week that dream has slowly become a reality, but it has been a long and trouble fraught journey. The project really took form when I discovered that there was a guy, in Georgia, making a small (4 lb) coffee roasting drum out of 304 stainless steel that was designed to fit into a backyard bbq. I started fantasizing about custom ordering one for my little SeaBQ, but got a little overwhelmed by the details. ...

The Garhauer Rigid Boom Vang arrived today. This is the first major system install since the windlass and it marks the beginning of a series of complex installs that will last until we shove off. I didn’t really think it would be all that difficult when I ordered it at the boat show. “Just drill a few holes, tap them, and bolt it on,” I thought. But when I started lining it up I realized I would need to dust off some of that trig that I had forgotten 15+ years ago. A few well written blog posts later I’m feeling much better about the install. I’ll try round two tomorrow (and document it if you’re lucky). ...

I met Kevin Coughlin of New England Ropes (NER) this weekend. New England Ropes is the vendor that will be providing the finished Dyneema® product, and Kevin has been awesome so far at liaising between us and the contest organizers. I finalized our inventory (who would have guessed what a project that would be) and sent it off with some additional questions. From NER the Dyneema® spools will be sent to West Marine in Connecticut Newport, RI for splicing and then out to us to install on Convivia. He expects it to be here in 3ish weeks. ...