Boot Stripe, Bottom Paint and Canvas

Boot stripe, bottom paint, canvas and interior teak. All done. Sanibel is looking great from the inside out now. After working on the "hidden" systems of the boat for so many months it is really rewarding to actually be able to "see" real progress. We have the sails on her now so I am able to address some of the details in the running rigging.

I also have found a local guy that scraps boats and sells this "boat gold" for cheap. I hope this guy doesn't discover ebay, at least while we are still here. Some of the bounty include: blocks, stainless for the dodger, a folding teak swim ladder for $20, and the best of all was a pair of Harken self-tailing primary winches for

$400. I have installed the winches after servicing them, I'm sure they were last serviced the day they were assembled at the factory. They are working nicely now and will make life simpler under sail.

We have also upgraded from the previously posted paper dodger template, to an actual canvas and plastic dodger, this beast of a project took a lot of thought. I believe if I would have killed just one more brain cell back in the 90's, this dodger would not have come to be. But, as it is I am happy with the results. Much of the credit for its completion goes to Lories sewing skills and her Brother home sewing machine.

We are using Lories home machine because I broke our heavy duty 1950's Necchi. The Necchi has been a little problematic at times but has sewn through some incredibly thick material, namely during the replacement of the sacrificial strip on the Genoa sail. After reading another blogger brag that there new Sailrite LSZ-1 could sew through 8 layers of Sunbrella material, the Necchi was not to be outdone. The Necchi drove through 12 layers like a champ so we went for 16. In hindsight this was a little unnecessary but the rum and coconut water said "go for it".  After going through 6 inches  like a jackhammer something gave loose and now the shaft the needle mounts to slides around freely. Well, this is now on the needs fixin' list, teach me right, probably not.

Our engine starts and runs fine, but does smoke. especially when it is started cold. It will probably need to be rebuilt in the future, but I don't want to do anything too involved until we can spend some time in the water running it. I haven't been able to get the tachometer working off the alternator so I bought a product called Tiny Tach that has a sensor which mounts around one of the injector pipes. It makes sense that a injector will activate once per revolution of the engine, but I haven't figured out how this little sender detects it.

Floor Pic

Heres a photo of the floors progress. We have about 5 coats of Minwax poly for floors on in this shot and plan on two more tomorrow.  We have had a time keeping the dirt and cat hair out of the paint, but I guess it will be a form of nonskid. The only other issue has been near the engine access where some oil has soaked into the teak. The poly there will not dry.

Sole Redemption

Sanibels Sole (or floor) was in need of some attention. As our splash date approached and it became more clear that everything we wanted done at that point wasn't going to happen, we thought that maybe we could finish the interior once we were living aboard. We soon had visions of living in a 240 square foot dwelling with a floor that you couldn't walk on. Well needless to say the vision was not pretty and we decided to push the splash out a month and get the interior of Sanibel shiny again. Now that the rigging, gelcoating, painting, nonskid, epoxy work, rewiring, plumbing, engine installation  and carpentry is more or less done (oh, what a satisfying sentence to write), we knew we could tackle the interior brightwork safely. You may know we have been working on all the teak trim on Sanibel, which has turned out great, but, the monkey has been the floor. The boat had flooded at some point and the water sat 4 or 5 inches above the floor for a long time. The teak was water stained and basically black. We attacked it  with non toxic Home Depot orange stripper we call "sherbet". Then, Bar Keepers Friend that has oxalic acid in it and really brought the color back. Here are a few pictures of the fun we have been having:

Diesel Dilemma

One of the first things on my to do list once we got Saninel to the boatyard last year was getting the engine running. The diesel had never been installed, it was just resting on the stringers when we bought the boat. Actually it was rusting on the stringers due to a bad leak from the cockpit floor. The engine was suppose to have zero hours on it after a full rebuild, but nearly a decade of sitting in the

boatyard had took its toll on the beast. The injectors were just balls of rust, the starter was full of rust sludge, and the rags hanging out of the exhaust ports were wet and probably whisking water into the head. Despite its dismal appearance I went forward trying to get it running. I reassembled it with new injectors and starter, mounted and aligned it and to my surprise, it started.



I haven't been able to test run the engine as much as I would have liked since then, but its time to come back alive has come. I recently installed the control cables, fuel tank and wired it in. After some priming and starter time, she fired up. She would start and stop now but I noticed some drips from the fuel injection pump. Actually, four different drips. I promptly consulted with my friend Google on the amount of drips in a gallon and found at least six different answers, why, who knows but none looked good for our fuel efficiency.

Well, next step was to find a rebuilt injection pump. $1225.00.(Which is what we would probably take for Lorie's entire car) Or they could rebuild mine for $725.00. "Oh, okay" I said, "cool, and do you sell rebuild kits?"  Well, yes. $25.  I'm not a gambling man but I will throw down 3% and give it a try. To be continued.

Checkin' in

Dear Friends and Family,

Here we are checking in once again.

Jimi continues to remove teak from Sanibel to bring home, so I can strip, sand and varnish it. All the striping and sanding is done thus far and we are preparing space where I can begin varnishing. This is going to be a lengthy process. We think he has removed everything he is able to, which means everything left will need to be done at the boat. The ladder still needs to be painted with varnish.

 My amazing Jimi took an old teak table top from another boat and made it in to a swim ladder. It hooks over the edge of the boat and allows us to climb down into our dingy or up onto Sanibel. It's amazing - check out the picture.

Still amazing - he also took an old mahogany door from a 50s Chris Craft and made it into a shower pan for our shower. He slightly con-caved the middle with a circular saw and sander, drilled a large hole for the drain, covered with epoxy and WA-LA - a beautiful mahogany shower pan. He's like a proud papa.

I did a little more sewing on the mizzen sail cover. We spread the genoa sail out in the front yard and scrubbed both sides with scrub brushes, soap and water. It looks like an entirely different sail when it's clean. Lol.

Jimi painted two of the original light fixtures and re installed them; both are for the saloon.

We continue to sell things on eBay His motorcycle was picked up last week. The trailer still sits in the front yard - no takers or even lookers. We have not listed my car yet, but we will soon.

We have great great news to report and I am super excited about it. Jimi purchased a used device called SPOT Messenger and paid for an annual subscription to its service. What is SPOT? SPOT is high tech; it receives our position from GPS satellites and then sends that position to the SPOT satellite, which then reports our location to the internet, Facebook, text message and email.

Jimi has been working on upgrading our blog to represent our future adventures with Sanibel. Check out our new look and all the new goodies. Included is a SPOT map page (mentioned above), so you will always know where we're at. Here's a link to the map page: http://dogbonegraphics.com/blog/?page_id=2589 Theblog is still a work in process.

Jimi is still working on bits of the electrical still. Here is a picture of him wiring the engine panel in his office. He is NOT making a bomb - LOL.

39 days till we put Sanibel in the water. 70 days until we move aboard. As much as I want to, I'm not sure if I can officially say it's getting down to the wire yet. We still have a lot to do. Jimi is worried about getting everything on Sanibel done, whereas, I'm worried about the piles and mounds of stuff in our house that will have to be gone through and cleaned out. It's all a little overwhelming at times.

Until next time!

Love everybody,
Lorie & Jimi

We can see the finish line

Dear friends and family,

Hello hello. How is everyone? We are doing great. Busy little beavers, we are.

Sewing the V berth cushions went very well; they are finished. We've fitted them on Sanibel and they look great. Here are some long awaited pictures of all the cushions. I've made some pillows for the saloon also, but did not take any pictures of them.

We sewed the sacrificial on the genoa sail. It was a challenge to say the least and was most definitely a two person job. We're not finished with it yet, as we have to figure out how to do the corners and make the pockets. It took both of us working between three and six hours a day for five days to get this much done. The genoa sail lives on the bow of the boat. In a triangular shape the two sides we worked on measured 41 feet to the top and 20 feet across the foot. This thing is huge being the largest sail on the boat. The sacrificial  protects the sail from the UV rays when it is not in use and rolled up on the forestay.  Once we complete all the sewing, we have to figure out a place we can stretch it out and wash it.

I have stripped all the old varnish off the interior doors (there are 4). The next step is to sand them and then apply six coats of new varnish.

I began sewing the cover for the mizzen sail. Since we don't have a pattern, Jimi will take it to the boat for fitting and bring it home, so I can sew the next bit. This process will take place until it is complete.

Jimi has sanded the lower portion of the hull, aka bottom paint. This is a nasty job because it involves sanding overhead and the paint is very toxic. Without it, we would have lots of animals growing on the hull, even oysters. For about four days he came home completely blue. I told him he looked like a smurf. He said he'd rather be refereed to as a blue man. Ha ha.  He has braced t
he interior floor, which previously had some bounce to it in areas. He build the battery box. He has installed both toilets with sanitation hose and the holding tank. And he closed three thru hulls. For some reason there were too many holes in the hull and Jimi says "holes in boat....bad".

Molly brought a baby bunny to us one evening last week. Jimi set it free in the front yard. The next morning Molly brought it back in the house. We felt it may be hurt, so in an effort to save it's life we researched and made a natural rabbit habitat for it until we could be sure it was ok. Later that same day, after searching our yard, another baby bunny was found. We brought it in to be with it's sibling and then we went about our business. About 11:30 pm that evening we checked on the bunnies to find the second one had died. And the next morning the first one was dead. I felt horrible thinking we had done something wrong. But Jimi assured me we had not. That same day Molly brought us a third bunny. Jimi immediately took it to a nice grassy field and set it free, where hopefully it survived.

So, there we are. That's all for now. 56 days until we put in and about 87 till we are full time live-a-boards.

Love everybody,

Lorie & Jimi

The countdown begins

Dear Friends and Family,

A few more weeks have passed and we've gotten a few more things done.

First, we were fortunate enough to have guests over the Labor day weekend. Juraj from Colorado came to visit for 5 days and Melody came out for 4 days with her daughter, Summer. We did all the usual things like hang out at a couple of different beaches and go out for dinner. Juraj helped Jimi on Sanibel one morning and they spent an afternoon on Lemon Bay with our dingy. Jimi took Summer's senior pictures. We had a wonderful time; it's just too sad that it goes by so quickly.

Now on to business: Jimi began working on the plumbing. We now have both fresh water and salt water available to us in the galley. We also have two working toilets that flush to the ocean. He will install a holding tank to be used when necessary. It is on order and should arrive shortly. The drains to the vanity sinks are hooked up, however, we are waiting on the pumps for the water delivery. We will not have a pressurized system on board. Going back to old school, we'll have to work for our water with hand pumps. The aft shower will be the exception having a pressurized system from the hot water tank, which is heated by excess power from the wind generator when the batteries are full. No energy wasted. :-)

Though most of the electrical is done, there are still some very important items to be addressed. Jimi continues to work these in as parts, etc. are available.

I have completed both the saloon and cockpit cushions. I'll now begin on the forward berth.

Now for more fun stuff: We played hookie a week or so ago taking our dingy out to Lemon Bay and into the Gulf. We found a somewhat secluded island on Stump Pass and spent a few hours exploring and swimming. As usual we saw lots of dolphins and some manatee.

It was fun. We went to Calico Jacks to listen to a friend's band play while we played pool. And Sunday we went on a 7.5 mile bike ride with our folding bikes. I have to mention all the animal encounters we came across - a snake that I nearly ran over, which turned out to be a non-aggressive and non-venomous corn snake, a couple of bunny rabbits, a tortes, the no need to mention endless amount of geckos, several different species of birds including a cardinal, and dragon flies playing 'chicken' with my head (I won every time). The sign says the area is an alligator habitat, but we didn't see any of those and in fact this is the first time we've seen any animals other than geckos on this trail. We were in awe of the array of wildlife we came across.

One week ago Jimi listed his motorcycle for sale on Ebay. It's bittersweet for him with many mixed emotions on the issue, but the bike sold on Sunday and now we await the buyer to pay for it in full and make shipping arrangements. We also listed my father's trailer, which we used to move out here with, on Craigslist, but no bites yet.

I visited the eye doctor a few days ago and was told I should consider bifocals. I refuse to admit I am that old, therefore, I will continue as I am. Lol

An unofficial countdown has begun: as of today roughly 11 weeks until Sanibel hits the water and 15 weeks until she becomes our full time residence.

We love hearing for your guys and hope everyone is doing well.

Love everybody,

Lorie & Jimi