How the years fly by!  A planned few years of full-time cruising have somehow turned into 14 years with 3 different boats – Thanks Lori!

While our summer was mostly consumed with boat projects, we managed a bit of fun including dinners with friends, family, birthday getaways to Vermont for Benj & to Rhode Island for Lori.  At least most of our work were “one-time” projects – or at least we keep telling ourselves!

While our chores & lack of a rental car somewhat limited visits with friends, one arrived by water – here’s Mike on “Easy Riders” – a PDQ similar to our old one. Ironically, this PDQ was the first one we ever went aboard, with a different owner down in Florida back in 2015.  Mike’s done a great job “restoring” Easy Riders – it was a little rough when we first saw her!

If we had to “give up” a summer for projects, this was the year as the weather was funky all summer including heavy rains locally & especially further north which kept debris (& sewage) flowing almost continually.

BEFORE:  Did we have the worst surveyor in-the-world inspecting our boat before our purchase – or what? This photo shows the bottom half of an auxiliary diesel tank installation for our generator. This 20-gallon tank was barely-supported on a piece of flimsy plastic board.  Our surveyor completely missed this potential disaster.

AFTER:  Originally only a 10″ round inspection port for access, so I had to cut-out a bigger opening & could still barely reach in, but provided the diesel tank with much better support.

My only sit-down job all summer – splicing a new anchor bridle to the bow eyes (better angle to the anchor chain & less mess/friction on the bow deck).

Every year in mid-September, Mother Nature suddenly throws the switch, letting us know we’re done with A/C & time to turn on the morning heat AND … time to leave! This was our morning view on departure day, but 1/2 hour later as we shoved off this was pea soup, but dissipated a few miles further down river.

Our plans this fall & winter look to be a repeat of most years.  While we’ll mix it up a bit, we’ll be arriving in Florida for November & then depart for the Bahamas mid-December.

How embarrassing!  Let me count the ways how WRONG this whole bilge pump set-up is:

1. Inferior quality hose
2. A single, rusted hose clamp
3. Poorly spliced wires dangling in the bilge water
4. The float switch (in the foreground) held on with just one screw
5. The hose discharge barely above the waterline allowed seawater to backfill into the bilge
6. Filthy,
7. FILTHY bilge!

We certainly have our work cut out for us!  After the very clean & dry bilges on our PDQ, seeing these was quite the shock. Cleaning up & fixing up was first on our very, very long list.

This display we installed warns us if there is ever more than 3″ of water in any of our 6 bilges. The photo on the right shows a water sensor 4′ down into the bilge beneath our generator.

After our scary engine bilges, we went to the other extreme by installing a high-water alarm system for all 6 of our bilges. Our 6 isolated bilges (plus 4 waterproof “crash” compartments) provide great safety in the event of water intrusion (aka sinking).  On the other hand, running wires thru-out our boat for 6 bilge switches was quite the challenge taking nearly 2 weeks.  While we were torturing ourselves, we also ran wiring for high temp engine alarms, an additional generator temp sensor & for improved lighting in the galley.

After several frustrating days, Amazon to the rescue with a remote camera hooked up to my iPad.

Safety in many forms – we installed a fire suppression system in both engine compartments (the tank is installed at an angle as required for this model). Even though diesel engine fires are extremely rare, our insurance company required us to install them.

Interrupting our projects was week-long Connecticut River flooding from the heavy rains in Massachusetts & Vermont.  THOUSANDS of trees & pieces of debris floated by and MILLIONS of gallons of raw sewage (thanks Hartford & Springfield 😦

How I miss having a workshop! It took pretty crude methods to turn this 5″ shelf into a 2″ shelf to accommodate our new convention/microwave over our stove in the galley.

Our quickest project was installing a new chainwheel (the shiny thing to the left) on our anchor windlass. While the prior owner had recently replaced one of the two anchor chains with 200′ of new galvanized chain, it wouldn’t go even a foot without jamming as it was incompatible. “Only” $650 (for that shiny thing) & only an hour of labor was record breaking!

A “famous” Smith Island cake (shipped in from tiny Smith Island in the Chesapeake – population 200), along with donuts from Neil’s Donuts in Middletown, CT kept our spirits up when wiring went wrong.

Now officially “Twin Sisters”

We are finally past the half-way point of our projects & can finally see the light at the other end.  We may actually take our boat out someday soon!