The Fridge

   We made a quick trip down to visit the little girl last week. She isn't letting any water in, but, the plastic we put over the starboard rail that we took off, had came off. So the Cap'n sealed all the screw holes with silicone.  We decided to work on trying to see what kind of shape the refrigerator was in and why it doesn't keep thing as cold, for very long.  When we took the countertop off, and the fridge top off, we found that the insulation was just pieces of strips of styrofoam, chunked out, broken, pieces of moldy styrofoam.

So you know what the Cap'n said, "thats gotta go" , so, out it came. It was quite challenging getting the shell of the fridge out, we laughed and cussed the darn thing, but, it came out the companion way. After some dismantling, and trimming the edges, it finally came  out, . . then, ,  we had to figure out how to get it into my car, hahaha. I stayed on board while the Cap'n figured that out.  bunkmate 

Polishing

     It seems that the Cap'n has spent awhile at the wheel polishing, along with all the varnishing, he has kept himself very busy. It's starting to get a little cold, so he is starting to do the things he can do inside. He only has one more coat of varnish to apply on a few things, and he will be done, with the stuff we brought home. Then when we are able to spend time on her, we will be doing all the teak that isn't removable.
     One more trip before we are comfortable leaving her for the winter. Unfortunately I wont be able to go this time. Working retail this time of year, not much luck getting the time off. Looks like the Cap'n will be doing this trip alone.    bunkmate

Monday September 10th, 2012

While we were on vacation I sat & wrote a little blog. On Monday Sept. 10th, 2012.
     Cerridwen sure is lovin' all the attention she is getting, you can almost feel her roll over onto her back so you can rub her belly, hahaha
     We, yes I said we, have been working almost non~stop on getting the head completely restored. All the cutting, measuring, sanding, measuring, cutting,has paid off for the most part. All the measuring was mostly spot on. And what wasn't, was pretty close, so not much cutting was needed. The fiberglass was another story though, I wont go into it, but it was (hilarious) an  experience. We ( I ) learned alot this weekend. And the week ahead is shaping up to be just as much fun.
      I wish that I had written more, but, , , , 
The pictures show alot of the steps. As soon as we did all we could, at this time, we ripped into the galley, , , and thats got to be another post. It sure is fun working side~by~side with Cap'n Carey :)  bunkmate 

Vacations

 Ya know, if you want a week to pass real fast, Go On Vacation!! I swear, we worked our butts off putting the head back together, after fixing the leaks, ( fingers crossed we got it this time ), and then tore into the galley. We ripped out some pretty gross stuff. We took all that teak home, and Cap'n Carey got on the sanding, and then this past weekend we put on the second coat of varnish. Its amazing the difference in the Teak without the mold/grease/dirt caked on it. She is turning out to be even more beautiful everyday. When we set sail, , , ,   to wherever, she is going to be like brand new.  bunkmate

Sanded and ready for varnish.

Two coats down and many more to go.

The Trailer Trip

Well the vacation was fabulous!! We had sooo much fun. We got alot accomplished. While tearing the head apart, to find where the mold is coming from, we found a couple of spots where the water could be coming from. We thought it was coming from the stantion. Then while the Cap'n was emptying the ice chest, the water came pouring into the head. We tracked it down to where the gate is, on the port side, There is plate that has 4 visible screw holes, and 2 that are under the plate, I'm assuming they had some silicone in them at one point, when there was no need for the other screws.? The only bad part is we finally figured it out the day before we left. We pulled the trailer full of the doors, cabinet doors, drawers, etc. anything that we could take home, the boom, the hard dinghy, the head mirror, the ceiling boards, window frames, , , . The Cap'n has been busy sanding and varnishing, and sanding and varnishing. Saturday he was so happy that he finally has some finished product. The picture is the unfinished frames. The Cap'n will be going down to Napa, next weekend by himself, to get the motor set for sitting awhile. He started to do this while we were there on vacation but he didn't have the right stuff to get it completed. Now he has all the stuff to get it done. And he wont have me and the kids in his way.
   Our next vacation is coming up in September, the 7th thru the 16th. But I'm thinking we will be taking a couple of long weekends in between vacations. I think both of us are having a hard time staying away from her.  bunkmate 

Vacation time!!!

Yeah, vacation is coming up, this next friday we head out to go spend some quality time scrubbing her head to toe to knock off the first layer of crud. Then off to Lee's place to get everything out of his shed, and bring it home, so we can go through it all, throw some away, put most of it in our storage shed. Which the Cap'n has been making shelves for the storage shed in anticipation of all the 'stuff'. We have one week off, hopefully that will be enough time to do all the 'boat stuff' , bunkmate

Visiting Cerridwen

Our Capn is headed down to Napa to visit Cerridwen, and get the engine all prepared to sit for awhile. It's going to be easier to do without me and the kiddz. I guess we are too much of a distraction. He is going to be bringing back more things to be sanded, painted, deep cleaned, etc. He has been doing the detailing on all the doors, cabinets, hinges, handles, louvres, and brass fittings, etc.

The first of the firsts

The first trip to Napa after the move up river was pretty exciting for us and full of firsts. This was the first trip directly to Napa to see her in her new spot, on the hard looking over the vineyards and fields where we will grind away our time and money over the next couple of years while she makes her shinalizing transformation. Our first trip to skip the Bay Area and take a right turn to Napa just before the real madness starts "YES". The first time aboard the boat without any meetings, surveys, or business negotiations with anyone. The first time to be on the boat when she is OURS! The first time to dig in and throw shit away! Wow what you find in a 35 year old boat, ... besides mold. Let alone a boat that was lived on by a Family of four, for eight years on the Delta and then bought by a military man turned special agent thats wife hates boats so it was basically a bachelor pad for the next seven. It was our first time to make her ours and that is the best first of all.
  We got to get a feel of her on the water and prep her for the hauling out and now prep her for the real task at hand. Kind of like an alcoholic or drug addict, you have to break them down and then build em' back up. We have started breaking her down which may sound sad but we have been ready to dig in and start prepping our cruising boat for 4 years so it feels great, and the learning has begun. You can't get to that step without going through this step. We have already pulled all of the cabin and cabinet doors along with much of the cosmetic brass hooks and hangers to be sanded, varnished, and polished at home.
  The next trip will involve disassembling the galley and more of the head to gain access to the deck fittings on top. We want to see if there are any major leaks on the starboard side (right) and get an idea of what will be involved to drop all of the headliner to see where all of the moisture on this side of the boat is coming from and causing the mold problem. The head and the galley do have a lot of moistures involved but we think there is more to it. We will also be getting the diesel engine winterized and ready to be stored for the long period of time that she will be down, including draining the fuel tank. If this is not done much damage can come from a diesel left to sit with dirty oil and fuel in it. We will update more after the next trip and then we get a weeks vacation to really get some work done.

  For the non boaters I am going to do a little segment over a few posts about "cruising", what it is, what it takes to do it and why the hell someone would want to go through all of this for it ... oh yah and why it is not for everybody. 

Captain Carey

It's going to be a long time before we get to see our Captain at the helm of Cerridwen. She is currently under the name of 'Reunion', a name she will not be leaving with. We are not quite sure how to do the name change, but it will be done properly, the right way. To name a vessel that has been running around for a long time, with the need for a change in direction, and she finally found us. It's going to be a fabulous relationship that we have. We can tell by the way she is already acting with the cleaning, and clearing out the 'stuff', and taking pictures of places that have not been even looked at in forever, and she knows we are going to take care of her the way she will be taking care of us. . . bunkmate 8)

Here we go again

Well here we go again, starting from the inside out. The most important thing is the soul (or the sole). We started the gutting process, everything out of the cabinets,cubbies, sole, the crevices, and places we only just discovered. there is sooo much stuff, sooo much supplies, and sooo many spare parts. We definitely have alot of stuff to go through this year.

 We brought home all the cabin doors, a bunch of the stuff out of the cabinets. We will be bringing home sooo much, just to know what we need to put back on her. We left at about 1:30 yesterday from Napa and it was 94 degrees (according to my car), and it was raining by the time we hit Oregon, big difference.   bunkmate :) 

Rollin' on the river again! - Vallejo to Napa

  It has been a long time since we have been on the rivers of central California on a boat of ours. Not since the Shine Shack (our house boat we lived on in Tower Park)have I had such a desire to sing some Credence Clearwater while under way. I wanted to squeeze in a post from the last trip down before we head down again this weekend for things that Bunkmate touched on and will be put in a following post.

 After some haggling with Lee about where we wanted to dry dock the boat we got our way and made plans to put her up in Napa Valley Marina. They have a non-work yard and and a work yard with about a $200 a month price difference so we are putting her in the non work yard until she is paid off next year. We can still do some work inside and remove things that will come home with us to get worked on here but no sanding, varnishing, painting, or anything that resembles work from the outside but we can do quite a bit down below as long as we do it discretely. This meant that anything that needed to be done topside that involved these things needed to be done this weekend so we had to work quickly. All of the teak on the topside and a little caulking needed to be done to get it protected from the sun and rain so that it didn't get any worse before we could get into the major refit that will involve unstepping the mast and completely stripping the topside and a fresh coat of paint and nonskid which will come after moving her to the work yard next year.
  She was to be hauled out on Monday and it is a pretty good trip from Alameda to Napa so Lee moved her to Vallejo on Thursday with his friend Gordon and we would meet up with the boat there about midnight to 1:00 AM because we couldn't leave until Heather got off around 7:00 PM. We would then take the boat the rest of the leg with him Friday morning. It took them about 7 hours to get to Vallejo and we needed the key to get into the harbor when we rolled in after hours. In a quite comical message from Lee who was pretty exhausted, we got the message that he would leave the key on a big yellow crane, behind the control box of the big yellow crane, to just look for the big yellow crane ... I think big yellow crane was said about 4 more times in the message. After arriving at 1:30 AM we did indeed find the big yellow crane and had a nightcap and crashed.

  Friday morning we drove to Napa and met Lee there to shuttle him back to Vallejo so that we had a vehicle at the other end when we got there. We wandered the yard waiting for Lee and were happy with our decision to move her here. A very nice yard outside the bay area to get her ready to go cruising. We headed back to the boat and got ready to get under way when we realized that Lee had been looking at a date in 1996 for the tidal information and we were in fact at the peak of a mean low tide with a -1 low. It was now already noon and we weren't going anywhere right now. So we got some paper out and started sanding the teak to make use of the time. At around 2:30 after talking to a nice bloke from OZ(New Zealand) that has made this trip

several times before and gave us some navigation tips we were confident in departing. A nice uneventful trip up the river brought back memories of the Delta days. We arrived safely and grabbed a piece of guest dock and immediately went back to work sanding with supervisor Lee watching to make sure I knew how to put on a coat of varnish. If you know anything about men you know we all have a little different way of doing things than the other and of course our way is just a little bit better. Sooo with tongue in cheek we sanded and varnished until we appeased him. Heather made a nice plate of fruit we snacked on while we finalized signing the contract and we sent him on his way after he gave me a ride back to the car on his Spyder(a three wheeled BMW motorcycle). It now felt really good to be on our new boat and at her new home but after only a few hours sleep we were spent and my pink eye was the proof. A couple of sundowners and some supper and to the aft cabin we went. It is pretty roomy but with too many weenies in the bed (the dogs silly) it does get smaller, at least for me. Never the less Saturday we went to work and while very busy, we got everything accomplished and had fun doing it. We wrapped up Sunday and got out around 4:00 for an eta of 10:30 at the barn. The adventure has officially begun!

Well as you have noticed, She has definitely found us. We have found a way to get her, and it wasn't easy either. But Captain Carey made sure we weren't walking away without her. She is beautiful, full of possibilities. She is full of spare parts, and full of exciting stuff, that we don't even know yet. We are still learning all the stuff that comes with her, Lee (the guy we are buying her from) has a storage shed in his backyard, full of stuff that goes with her, that we don't even know is in there. We are going to Napa this coming weekend to get on her and pull the sails off, do a bunch of measuring, bring home as much stuff as we can, to try to get an idea of what kinda stuff we are looking at. We live in Medford, Or. and she is in Napa Ca. Kind of a long drive, so we have to make the best of every trip.

     Captain Carey has his own little workroom. And is pretty excited about getting to play/work in there. he has a lot of plans for the 'Shinalizing' that needs to be done, before she is ready to go with us through the places we want to go, and the things we want to do,,, so stay tuned for more excitement, we are ready to go, and only have a couple of obstacles in front of us, but they are small ones, we have already done the hard stuff, , ,  its time to buckle down for a little over a year, then we are off to , , , , , whatever we want, wherever we wanna go, , , ,   bunkmate

The little vessel that could

 Since Bunkmate is kind of snoozing at the blogging wheel, I thought I should probably recap the last month as it has been a pretty substantial and extremely busy one.  We have sold our Simplicity and have bought (or are the process of buying) a new to us boat. She is a 1976 Fantasia 35 MKII Hull#58 named Reunion that we bought in Alameda California. She is a sturdy full keel 22,000 lb boat with a 1/2" hand laid glass hull. She will not be the first one to the finish line, but she will always get us there for the after party. She does not really fit all of the perimeters that we had initially set for our cruising boat, but it is always a compromise with boats, and we chose a little more comfort and security in place of sailing performance, and I don't think we will ever regret it. We feel she will take extremely good care of us and we intend to repay the favor.
  We were not really ready to be in the market yet but just as Simplicity had, she kind of just squeezed her way into our hearts and we had no choice but to make it happen. We went to the Strictly Sail boat show in Oakland to drool over some sailing boats and stuff, plus to get our cruising juices rejuvinated and figured we would look at the listings to see if there were any boats in the area that warranted a look. The only one that materialized was this one and boy did it materialize! We cooberated a meeting with a friend of the owner since he was in Hawaii at his other house(geesh), and arranged to take a look immediately after pulling into town before going to the boat show. I won't get to much into the details but will say the boat show seemed to have a second priority after that. We had a great time and mingled with some fantastic cruising and dreaming folks just like us at the Cruisers Bash that only fueled the fire. It really is cool to be around other people that have the same dreams when the vast majority of people and family just don't understand what it is really about for us.
  The very day after returning we had come up with a proposal for purchase that we thought we could pull off and presented it to the owner. To our surprise he accepted it and now we had to put it in place. This involved pooling money from every place we could think including selling everything that had any value. well long boring story short we were off to Alameda 2 weeks later to meet the owner the very day he returned from Hawaii. After some hashing and talking about the boat we went to the Yacht Club for lunch to work out some details. We cancelled our second night reservation in our Hotel and got to spend the first night aboard our new boat Reunion soon to be Cerridwen, and will be referred to as such from this point on. What a fabulous night aboard our boat that would make all of our dreams a reality.

We got out for a sea trial and test sail Sunday afternoon and met up at the owners house in the evening to see all of the goodies (and there are many) that come with her. After getting out of the house with the incredible hostess from Sri Lanka that is his wife (and that was not easy) we were headed home with an eta from Shirley (our GPS) for  12:30 in the morning and both of us have to be to work in mere hours. Exhausted, overwhelmed, excited, drained, spent, ... you name an emotion and we were probably feeling it, we arrived back home with a return trip set for Thursday for the next leg which was only three days away, ...whew, the adventure has begun!

Is she just a boat?

  There are some things we buy or acquire through our life that bring us joy, many that add convenience, and some that are just fun to have, but mostly it is really just stuff. Once every so often though, something comes along or is purchased that is so much more and truly becomes a part of our life, and even alters our whole life and the way we live it. Our dreams, goals, desires, wants, expectations and even our spirits are lifted because of this piece of material object. Or if it affects us so deeply is it really just a material object, or something so much more, maybe even food for the soul.

  We are about to add to our life something I believe fits into this category. She will never bring near as much joy as being with family or friends as that is the most valuable thing we have in life. However she will become so deeply ingrained into our life, that we will put the safety of our lives themselves in her hands. We will laugh, cry, sweat, fear, curse and experience the adventure that is life together. We have been drawn into "Cerridwen's Spell", and we will be forever better because of it.