Season Wrap Up and Lessons Learned This Year.

Saugatuck late October.  Last trip in for the season.

Did I sail as much as I wanted to?  Well no but that is probably something that will never happen.  When I had more time I used to make it out on the lake twice a week sometimes more and I still wasn't satisfied.  Regardless the season has come to an end for me this year.  Shenanigans was hulled out Thursday 10/14/2010 this year.  Saturday I went down to check on her and started pulling things off the boat for the winter.  Wow did we have a lot of stuff on the boat this year.  Sleeping bags, blankets, towels, even found my good blue jeans; "I'd been wondering where I had put those." Not to mention the board books toys and toddler snacks of Myles's.  While we might not have sailed the boat as much as I would have like we defiantly used the boat; sleeping over, sunning out on the deck, just stopping by on the way to the pool here at the marina the boat was a good distraction for us.   

So now to the engines drained, oils changed, cylinders fogged.

The cover is on.  Time to revisit the seasons lessons.























Lessons of the season.


Preventing Sea Sickness See the link

Re-bedding


The best tool to have are baby wipes. That's right forget the caulk gun, spreaders, rags, scrapers, razor blades. No article on re-bedding you read tells you what you really need to know. Sure they talk about how to re-bed fittings, shrouds and other deck fittings. They say clean the area be sure the deck is sealed. However not one of the articles on the web or in print tells you about this essential tool.

I did a lot of re-bedding this season and it wasn't till the end of the year I discovered that baby wipes work miracles. Once you have placed your fittings back together and mushed them to the deck the ooze that is re-bedding compound comes squeezing outs from below. This is where the baby wipes come in. I used to have a rag handy for getting the excess goop off until one day the rag I had been using was so full of gunk it was just making a bigger mess. I went down below deck looking for another rag to finish the job and their they where sitting on counter. Baby wipes I was only going to use a few to finish up the side stay re-bedding no bid deal. Wow what a discovery baby wipes take bedding compound of quickly easily and you have a lot of control over how the finished bead lines looks. Not only that but it leaves your stainless steal fittings shimmering and does not effect the paint on the deck. Best of all when you are finished your hands are clean and not all sticky.

Boats are Good for Kids Learning to Walk.

The other weekend we where at the park. Myles was up on the play structure. Granted not alone. BB and I where running around below the structure standing in strategic locations where a 18 month old might fall. This structure has one of the bridges you know the kind that sways up and down as the kids walk/run across it. Myles was having a great time running down the bridge as it swayed up and down under his feet. Then came along a 3 year old scared to go over the bridge as he stood watching it shake. Nervous to put his feet on the unsteady surface. To Myles a moving surface was old news the boat hardly ever sits still even when at the dock it tips up and down. Foot work on a sailboat is essential. Myles has really become aware of this over the summer as he has leaned to walk. It has been great to watch him over the summer go from stumbling over things and tumbling down every time the boat rocks to really being aware of his foot placement. Now he watches where he steps, placing his foot in between deck fittings and other obstacles walking through the inner shrouds. He has not by any means mastered the walking running thing just yet. He is desperately trying to jump but I have no doubt that sailing has helped him become steadier on his feet.

CO2 detectors are essential

I preface this section with no one was ever in danger at any time. It had been a few weeks since I had been down to the boat and started the engine so I thought hey better get it running. So I started it up closed up the hatches and got to work cleaning the deck. What I discovered is that if you run the engine at the dock with all the hatches closed for a little over an hour while you scrub and rinse the deck it will set of the CO2 detector.

Canvas is Thick

My sewing machine will sew threw 5 layers of outdoor canvas not 6. At 6 it will either make a distinctive thump noise and stop, or break the needle. It is not to fond of the gluey back on industrial strength Velcro either.

So that wraps up wet water sailing for 2010.  Next week is the Gull lake ice boat swap meet.  Time to change over hardware and get ready for some hard water Sailing. Time to THINK ICE!  

The V-berth hogs.

Little people wiggle.  I mean they wiggle a lot.  Myles is no exception.  We have slept aboard a few times this season.  Last night I stayed aboard with him on my own.  Just the little guy and me.  It was a great cool night for sleeping in the cabin and I had the fan's turned off by 9pm because it was starting to get a bit chilly.  I joined Myles in the V-berth around 10:30 he was out cold and on his side of the bed all was good until it started raining at 2AM.  I pulled the hatch closed over us then realized I had left the fan outside in the cockpit.  Reluctantly I dragged myself out of the berth.  I pulled the fan in put in one of the drop boards and replaced the mosquito netting by the time I got back.  Munchkin had moved on to my spot turned 180 degrees and pulled his blanket along with him. (See photo)  I managed to squeeze back in and scoot him over a bit.  It turned out to be a restful night and the rain led to a great morning.  Hopefully this cool weather holds and we will get B's to join us this weekend. 

Juicing up in the AM before heading home for Breakfast.

Sea sickness and the one year old

 

This season has been a bit rough so far. Myles are one year old has grown into sea sickness. Last year he was so little he slept most of the time that we sailed. This year he is up and at it most of the time.

The first two times out this season he has got quite sick. The first time we thought perhaps it was just a bad day for him. It surly started that way. As we left the harbor he was down in the V-Beth sleeping. We had the forward hatch open for air flow and to keep him cooler. Well all was good until we came the the harbor mouth. A large wave broke over the front of the boat and down the hatch it went. Myles was less than thrilled to be woken up from his morning nap in such a rude way. He was soaked head to toe after getting him cleaned and dried off he ended up throwing up all over his Mom. Not fun and not fun to clean up. We figured this had been a bad day and perhaps the sickness had been caused by a number of events perhaps over heating in the lifejacket or the iron supplement vitamin he had been taking.

The second time out we where far more cautious keeping him on deck talking to him and no vitamin's to mess with and a cooler life jacket. Well he got sick again. This time we knew our little one has started to grow up. He is walking now and his balance is not quite there yet but apparently he is now susceptible to sea sickness. We can only figure it has to do with his inner ear fluids and hopefully he will out grow it as he gets older.

What to do? We began the search we talked with other cruisers and family members about their experiences with children aboard and sea sickness. We goggled. Myles is to young for Dramamine or any other medication. Any parent with a child under the age of two knows by now that most childrens medications have been pulled from the market and sea sickness meds are no exception. We looked at the herbal market but those to are for children over the age of two years. Then we found out that they make wrist bands for children. My wife used sea sickness wrist bands through her pregnancy to deal with morning sickness so we where already aware of them and the positive affects she had with them made us decide this would be a great route for us to try out.

I am happy to report that they appear to be working successfully. We have sailed with Myles twice since purchasing the bands. If you are not familiar with these bands they are elastic bands that have plastic buttons on them. They are placed on the wrists and if you start to feel queezy you simply push the buttons. This button presses on a pressure point in the wrist which helps with the sea sickness. Obviously Myles is only up to about 30 words at this point and so he can't communicate how he is feeling but we keep a close eye on him. (As we always do when out on the water.) If he begins yawning this is a good tell, things aren't going well so we push the little buttons and start talking to him about things on the horizon. We sail off Saugatuck and there is a large weather ball up on the top of Mt. Baldy. This has been a great point of reference and the topic off our last two sailing trips as he love to say the word "Ball" ... Any ball, water tower or weather station will do for him they are all round and the are all balls in his vocabulary.  Here are a few more pics of the little guy showing off his new wrist bands. 

And this is the Distress button.

 Milk is good.

Tied in at the companion way do pad locks float?

The Canvas Shop

Yes that is a DAP plaster of pairs bucket and duct tape both are essential items for any canvas shop. Duct tape because sometimes you need more hands and the bucket just happens to be the perfect size for stretching winch covers specifically Barient 21 and 22 size winches.

The early projects I began with some left over duck cloth from my previous boat. The duck cloth was inexpensive in comparison to the outdoor canvas and I had it laying around. For a few prototypes it has worked well but the prototypes are already showing signs of fading and breaking down in the sun and I will have to replace them sooner than the projects I have done later this season.

I started making a depth finder cover and 2 winch cover for the 21's on top of the cabin from the old duck cloth. The depth finder cover fit perfectly but the winch covers took a bit more coxing to get them on . Thus the introduction of the DAP Bucket for the 22's I made later with outdoor canvas.

The outdoor canvas is far superior to the duck cloth having used both now and seeing the results of the sun on each I highly recommend going with the outdoor canvas but one word of warning if you iron the outdoor canvas be sure to use a iron set on very low heat as their is some sort of water proof coating that will melt off if your iron is to hot.

My other canvas projects this year have included a main hatch cover and mast boot cover.
I also laid out and redesigned the tiller cover.

I will probably get a few other things made before the season is up.

A Facelift: Deck Re-surfacing

Before After


The Chaser 29 I own has reached a point that the deck anti-skid needs to be re-surfaced in several areas. Their is some minor flaking on the bow of the boat near the baby stay and further forward near the Spinnaker down hull track. The decking has also become very dull and hard to get clean.

This Saturday I began the process of sanding and taping off the cabin. The sanding process took about 6 hours in the hot sun. I figure this isn't to bad given the amount of deck area covered. Not removing all of the deck hardware also created a significant amount of sanding that could not be done with the sander and therefore had to be accomplished by hand.

Sunday Morning I gathered all my materials and hit the road directly after lunch. I arrived at the boat around 1:30 and mixed my paint. Interlux brightside (Seattle Gray) was mixed-up with intergrip a non-skid additive. As I painted along it became apparent that I was going to run out of paint before I finished. I ended up having my wife to run out and get me a second quart. ;-) I wrapped up around 5:30 by getting two big slivers in my hand as I straddled the dock and the boat to finish the last square on the deck.

Monday afternoon I managed to get back down and pull the tape off. The finished product is a glossy light gray deck that is now safer, much less slick to work on while handling sails and will be easier to get clean.

An Atomic 4 Engine Upgrade.

This Friday I took sometime and did a handy little engine upgrade to my A-4. I installed a Indigo Electronics PVC valve kit. This kit is easy to install and has greatly improved the air quality in the cabin while we are underway. The Kit is just as described on Indigo's web site (www.atomic4.com/)easy and quick to install.


The directions were very clear the only snag I ran into was re-installing the carburetor. Once the spacer plate is in place I could not get the the carb. past the oil sending unit. Not really a big deal as it just took a second to remove the sensor and put the carburetor in place. Then put the oil sensor back.



The benefits of this system have been apparent. The engine seems to be running smoother and the air in the cabin is much better. In all the upgrade took about an hour and a half. It took me a bit of time to tune the idle and get it just right.

Further prep the re-naming

I've lost a lot of time this season and haven't really had a great chance to get back to update the blog... To busy I guess our 1 year old has started walking and it's a full time job chasing him around. So here is a round up of the season thus far.

I continued the boat prep. I stripped the old name off the boat. Accord previously Humdinger is now. SHENANIGANS



I put the name on the side of the boat. Sometime in the future I am planning on putting a boarding ladder on the back. So I painted the stern of the boat. Twice.. Grumble Grumble the first time I ended up with a pretty good run and ended up sanding it back out.


Next I straightened up the cabin and got the engine ready. De-fogged, checked the oil, battery, and greased the water pump among other things.










Later I got back did a little fairing on the Keel then painted the bottom with VC-17









Next I buffed out the hull.










So far this season I've been out 5 times. 5 great days of sailing so far this season. Bad new is we have found out that Myles our 1 year old gets sea sick.
Anyone with any tips we are open to suggestions. Any way hopefully I will get to posting more often. Sailing night this season is just getting started Friday nights for anyone interested in going out on the big lake.