Keith and I in Wine Country

Memorial Day weekend found Keith and I in Napa Valley...wishing we were doing the wine tour but instead Keith gave me a tour of his boat projects and what we had in store for us over the coming days. From the new bunk bed configuration, to the refrigeration, the wiring, the head, the bottom, the thru-hulls.....oh my the list is long and a little overwhelming.  Fortunately (or unfortunately?) for Keith I'm a trained professional and I set to work prioritizing our tasks:
refrigeration, thru hulls, bottom, head replacement..those were the primary projects for us to tackle.  Some of these were multiple day projects as they required cure or dry time. So I bumped those up our list, thru-hulls and painting the head.

First up - the thru hulls which had us removing the old ones and cleaning out the holes for the new Marelon ones which wouldn't corrode. After cleaning Keith sealed the bare wood in the thru-hull with a light coat of epoxy to ensure they stayed nice and dry...and then we moved on to the other projects since that then needed time to cure.

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Handing Keith parts for his wiring project way back in the transom.

Keith started working on wiring - focusing on clearing out old wires that weren't doing anything and organizing existing wires to safer placements.  I then took on the task of sanding out the bottom of the head, which Keith had stripped bare, and I painted it with a primer.  This had to be done before we could put the new head in place to the newly designed shelf for it which would be much lower and do-able for the young ones.   After the primer coat I had to wait for it to dry so  I then became Keith's assistant on a couple projects, wiring and putting the refrigeration back together.  I suggested I should be called Vana White but Keith said I was more like a dental assistant since mainly I was handing over tools.  Screw driver - check, wire clamp - check, drill - check,  and on and on it went.

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The refrig's fresh bottom before the plate.

Installing the plate

Here I am battling the boat logos - I swear I read the directions first but the thing was evil and I had to learn how to fail before I learned how to do it right. 

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A super exhausted me with Steadfast's fresh bottom and new thru-hulls.

My big accomplishment for the weekend was a new layer of paint on the bottom.  I buffed the whole bottom on one day and painted the whole thing the second day.  My arms are killing me but it feels good to have that task checked off my list.

So in all - not a drop of wine did we taste but we had three solid good working days where we made some excellent progress.  Finishing one project, nearly finishing two others.  With another few days like this we will be ready to drop her back in the water and move aboard where we will tackle some of the lengthier projects on the water.

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