It is too late now, we’ve paid the entrance fee

It has been almost two months since our last post. A lot has been happening, but most of it is not about boats. We sold our house in NE Portland and bought a small condo in NE Portland. Thank you David, our super realtor and sailing friend. We moved off of Gypsy and into the condo June 21st. We then had to do those new house things, like empty boxes and buy a couch. Then just as we were starting to return our focus to Gypsy we had a trip to Minneapolis to see family over the fourth.

Since we got back we have been checking tasks off of the list. Gypsy has a new alternator and voltage regulator. The old ones are going to be our spares. We installed a single sideband marine short wave radio. This will let us get weather forecasts, send text emails and join boater nets.  We installed lots of wires and parts and managed to find spaces for them. We added an AIS transponder, which tells other ships near by that we are there too and lets us know who they are and how fast they are moving.  We installed three solar panels and a solar controller. Nina has been getting the overhead panels covered in white vinyl and reinstalled. The cabin looks much better. Our life raft is now installed on the deck. The cabin has a new bookcase and table and a galley storage cabinet.

knife block start-163704350
While we were living aboard we discovered that we really needed a knife block. Keeping the knives in a drawer was not working. This is how the block got its start, strips of wood with a knife blade slot got glued together. This then got sanded and finished.  Thank you, Randy for the wood.  It’s the same wood as the tiller.
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The galley cabinet and knife block. The cabinet will give us storage for garbage on the bottom and thermoses on the top shelf. The trim is recycled from old Gypsy trim so it blends in. The door fronts are repurposed old drawer fronts that were on the boat when we bought her.  What’s really nice about the cupboard is we will no longer have a box of garbage kicking around the floor.
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Nina has been getting the overhead panels installed. They hide the cabin insulation and light wiring. The vinyl also helps to deaden sound. The panels can be removed if we need to get to deck hardware or wiring.  But, since the lights and fan are all screwed through the panel and into blocks in the ceiling, we hope we don’t have to take them down too often.
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The vee berth looks much better too.
liferaft-
You can see the life raft canister on deck in front of the dodger. You can also kind of see the SSB antenna going up the backstay.  New solar panels on the aft sides of the boat and one on the top of the dodger are now functional and are helping charge the new batteries.
solar-
The solar panels. The two aft panels on the stern pulpit can be adjusted to follow the sun. We left space on the dodger to stand on it when working on the main sail.
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The table and bookcase. The table is the old table Bill made for Gypsy. It now folds up when not in use. It will be fantastic to have space for books. The wood slats in the middle of the shelves lift out to get at the books and to keep them from flying into the cabin if things get rough.

We also signed up for the Baja HaHa. It is a 150 boat regatta from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas. It gives a date to leave for Mexico and it may help us get more social. It leaves San Diego November 4th. We are working on a date for a Bon Voyage party in Portland before we leave. We will let you know once the date is set.

 

8 thoughts on “It is too late now, we’ve paid the entrance fee”

  2. Wonderful blog update! Regarding the new headliner, our lights are mounted thru ours, with (approx)half inch wood spacers above out of sight — so the headliner is smooth and there is no indentation where the fixture is screwed in. Changing to a different dimension fixture is time consuming, but the overall effect is very ‘professional’ as it were.

    Regarding the knife holder — is there any friction at all to ‘hold’ them in place? I ask because on that delivery south on Chuck’s Cascade, we experienced one breaking cross sea that flung us over hard, and when we straightened up a camera that was behind a little fiddle on one side of the cabin was found on the opposite side…. it had traveled across with no apparent drop in trajectory. Exciting night (that was the gale we were running DW in. 19’ seas. Winds at 38 to 40 for 36 hours. Rocketing along at 10 kts.

    Anyhow, there can be quite a bit of “rearranging” done for interior stuff that you might think was secure in more ordinary conditions. See you later, Loren

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  6. Baja haha omg. From what I’ve heard twenty years ago, it’s one long frat party sunburn make a fool of your mate paint over your boat’s name barf in your hat rub it in your hair (if you have any) — and that’s before they weigh anchor first time. I think they used to have their own newspaper?

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