Learning the Boat

We’ve now spent two days with Captain Marty.  We’ve been taking the boat apart, basically, from bow to stern.  We’re about ½ way through through the inside.  We now know which pipes vent the propane out to sea (to keep us from blowing up!) and how the heads work, including which pipes go to the holding tank and which ones go outside.  We know how to pump out the heads using the marina’s pumps as well as how to manually pump them out to sea (once we’re three miles or more off-shore).

We’re amazed at how many cubby holes and hiding places there are on board.  And the captain is impressed with the size and layout of this thing as well.  He says our boat is only about 10 feet longer than his, but has about 4 times the space!  Good for us!!

We’ve replaced a hose and washed out the stern locker.  We had to take our bed apart to get underneath it to follow tubing, chains and electrical wires, what a pain!  But we’re learning a lot.

We also manually pumped all the water out of the dingy and given her a good washing.

Captain Marty is not with us today.  He had to deliver another boat to Mexico.  But that only means we’re busy doing all the homework he gave us.  We’re just about to have lunch, then out to wash off the deck, which is fun!!  Its such a pleasure to be out there in shorts and sun dresses and bare feet, getting wet. 

Piggy is still terrified, as usual, so he hides all day.  But Archie is having the time of his life.  He gets to explore all the cubby holes and even lie in the sun outside.  Here’s a couple of pictures of him doing his usual.

Yesterday we went to Walmart.  Kelly, get this!  We picked up 6 bottles of wine (should have gotten more) for only $1.97 each.  No kidding.  We now have 9 bottles sitting in the “wine cellar” under the galley floor.

We have now replaced the wire furling line with rope.  Should be much easier to operate now.

We’ve not had the time to play with video yet.  We’re have issues getting it loaded on the blog.  We might have to post on Youtube and provide a link here instead.  Stay tuned. 

Oh, and here is a picture of one of the many beautiful sunsets we saw on the way down here:

For Videos go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrlTZpEtygc

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uh4-vMVJcY