Memorial Day Weekend

Yesterday after work, I went to the storage place and moved the boat to another part and strapped it down for transport. I got a strap and wrapped it up over the boat attaching it to the trailer.

Today, I got up early, hitched up the boat to the truck and got on the road to the marina. The marina is called Green Turtle Bay which also has some cabins/houses for rental and lots of large motor boats, house boats and some sail boats. The marina opens up to Lake Barkley in Kentucky. The marina is about an hour away from where I live. I arrived there around 8am.

I had to wait for the overall manager to come by to talk to then they got it strapped up on the travel lift and lifted it off the trailer.

My boat is dwarfed in comparison to the other boats they had in the yard. This one is called a Sea Ray 52 Sundancer.

anyway, once it was sitting in the travel lift, it was moved out of the way and then the workers got the mast off the trailer and set it up on stands for setup.

By then, it was lunch time. I walked to the other side of the marina to the little restaurant and got a burger. I went to the dock where my boat will soon be and found a guy working on his boat that he got together with his dad and looking at going through the rivers down to the Gulf. We talked for a while then I walked back to the yard just in time to see one of the guys spraying down the bottom getting the old layers off and getting it ready for paint.

It was a beautiful day today and I spent most of it there at the marina. My arms, face and neck are not just red, they're glowing. Still, I enjoyed my time and it's exciting to see the boat getting closer to the water. The yard is also going to setup the mast and check a couple other things for me and it may be in the water in a week or two.

This will be the first time it's been in fresh water and possibly the first time it's been off the trailer in maybe a couple years.

I got to see lots of turtles floating around in the water or others, like these two, that were sun bathing. Usually, they would dive quickly when I walked nearby.

Memorial Day

Today was a nice, sunny, HOT day. It got to around 95°F today. Since it was a day off for me, I decided to do some work around the boat. I think I got there around 9:30-10am and didn't leave until 3pm. I had a 3 liter bottle of water with me that was quite warm by the time I left.

I wanted to get the standing rigging out of the house so I took it to the boat. I finally got to replacing the fore stay. It was needed since a connector was cracked in 3 places including one of them broken all the way through.

I first layed the furling track and new wire together to get the length right.

Since I was working on getting the threaded end on the wire, I first took it and inserted it into the Harken furler drum to see where it is seated when tightened. I put the old threaded stud into the broken connector while still on the line so I could mark where to cut.

Once I got the hacksaw out and did some cutting, things went together pretty quickly. Feeding the new line through the track wasn't too bad. I only had to twist a little to get it through. I think it turned out ok but the main test will be when it's all rigged up on the mast when I get Rhapsody into the water. That's when I'll start to worry.

Here is the connector that I took off the old line. I made sure to hold it where all the cracks are seen. Obviously, not something to keep around.

For a while, I had the boom at the house sitting on the deck in the back yard. It was wrapped in plastic but I took it all off so I could take a good look at it. Today, I took it back to the boat and layed it on top of the main sail down below.

I took a look over the mast itself too. I was sorting through which lines when to what and where. Looking at the mast head end, it looks like I could add a couple more lines but I think what I have now is sufficient. There's a line for the main halyard, jib halyard (used on the furler), and a line for the inner fore stay. There's another line I've been trying to figure out for a while and I think I figured it out today as being a boom lift. Looks like it can be adjusted. There's some sort of think plastic line on it that I'm thinking to take off as it looks to just get in the way.

I decided to finally get to the stuffing box again. I ordered a couple packs of the flax material. I only used one so the other can be back up for the future. Here I had a few supplies i thought I might use.

As I showed earlier, I took out 4 pieces of the old flax so I worked to put 4 back in. It was not easy to work in such confined space for me or the flax. Eventually, I got them all in there, tightened the nuts and this will be another thing to watch out for when Rhapsody gets into the water again.

I took it easy for a little while to do some sanding of the hand rail I took off so I could reseal. I'm looking to rebed with LifeSeal caulk. I looked at the areas down below considering to take the other hand rails off to sand and get ready for new varnish. All the interior hand rails are plugged up and nicely varnished and I'm not too crazy about ruining the finish. I'll have to take a close look to see what I can do to reseal other areas of the rails.

I think this piece turned out pretty good. Now, I need to figure out if there's anything else I need to do to prepare it for new varnish. Since I have time to scrape and sand other areas, I'm open to suggestions on how to proceed.

Not today but the last time I was working on Rhapsody, I decided to pull the trailer out a little. The back tire was next to a retaining wall to a pit. The main reason I wanted to pull it out was so I could get behind the boat a little better with the ladder so I can do some more sanding. The mast is also no longer hanging out over the pit either and is easier to reach. I think overall I moved it about 5 feet forward.

Since Rhapsody is likely in need of a new paint job before going sailing, I'm almost thinking of scrubbing the hull with a green scrub pad (normally for cleaning dishes) while it's raining. Since it's summer, the rain will be a little warmer. Just have to watch out for lightning.

I hope everyone had a good Memorial Day!