We are.
Just to bring you all up to speed - there are certain things that you have to do to be "street legal", even on the water (pirate land). You have to have certain safety equipment on board - life jackets, flares, fire extinguishers, horns, lights - because the Coast Guard can pull you over and check your boat out to make sure you're in compliance. By the way, the whole protection against unreasonable search and seizure that applies on land doesn't apply on the water. Pretty interesting. So we have been restocking those.
There are things that are not necessarily required, but just plain old prudent. Like instruments to tell you how deep the water is. A couple of days ago I was curious about what the wind speed was so I flipped the switch for the instruments expecting to look at our wind speed meter. Normally when these instruments are powered up I hear a "beep". In fact a couple of days before, that's exactly what happened. This time - no beep. Tried the switch again. Opened the little cabinet with the backside of all of the instruments and checked all of the fuses. They were all good. So that means checking the fuse behind the electrical panel. We have to do this yet.
Then there are the things we personally require before we leave the comforts of the marina. Like a working toilet. As you know if you've been following the blog, that system has been in rebuild mode. We're there now. In fact today we scrubbed the bilge (kind of like a wet cellar). The exorcism should be complete. There are NO LEAKS. I'm happy.
So we're very close. We have to check out that instrument issue. We'll top off the water tanks, dump the holding tanks, top off the propane tank. We'll make sure we have some yummy food. And we'll make sure we have some conditions that won't be too challenging - wind, currents, tides. And we'll go somewhere close, so we can come back in if something we didn't expect raises it's ugly head.
For the non-boat peeps out there - the bilge is the low spot in the hull of the boat. It's under the floor of the cabin. You lift out sections of the floor and you can see it. On a boat like ours it's less than a crawl space. It's enough room for water to gather and there is a pump that comes on and blows it out the back of the boat. There's been skunky water in there ever since we bought the boat. That's not unusual. But it wasn't our skunk, so it had to go. Today we brought in our hand pump and got rid of as much as we could that way. Then I went in with some rags and soaked up the rest and wrung it out until it was dry. Then I wiped it down with cleaner. Unfortunately in this process Simon got bored up on the settee (couch) and started "redecorating". That's what we call it when he starts throwing things off the furniture. In this case he tossed the just washed area rugs, throw pillows and my sweatshirt. And they just missed ending up in the skunk. I corrected that and asked him not to do that again (smirk). Five minutes later I heard a clatter and then I see Simon land in the bilge. I yarded him out and up on a settee before his paws got wet or he even registered what happened. For a split second I thought of taking a picture for the blog, but I know none of you would have approved of that.
Okay enough talk about the ugly side of boats, today Dave took advantage of the damp weather and swabbed (mopped) the decks. It's so nice to have those dirty spots clean. And here's a couple of pretty spots from Rotary Park
Lot's of wild roses along the walking path.
I love these two big madrones that like to "hang out together" over the edge of the bank.
Here's to crossing things off our to-do lists!
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