Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving turned out to be a wonderful week-end with some of the best weather all season – clear blue skies and temperatures in the high 70’s and a light breeze. William had to work until 4:00pm Saturday so I picked him up and we headed to the boat. Natalie and Mary had gone up in the morning – in fact they had gone across to the states to shop…….

We got to the boat and the plans were to head with Iron Genny to River Street Marina in Port Huron to take a transient slip for the night. So we got things stowed and fired up the big boys and headed off. At River Street we were moored in line with another 3 other Sea Rays – all of them bigger than ours – a 46, a 48 and a 50 footer. Hmmm……

John and Leslie joined us with their sailboat – Sundance. Since this was George and Jen’s anniversary they got to pick the restaurant for dinner. They picked the Zebra Bar – a very short walk down the river from our slips.

Next day we had a very relaxing morning and then headed back to Bridgeview. Natalie headed back home later in the afternoon to start getting things sorted for Thanksgiving dinner that we were hosting on Monday. Will and I stayed up to a) get work done and b) enjoy more of this outstanding weather. We got the dingy outboard winterized, the dingy out, scrubbed clean and deflated and all packed away in the car. Monday morning we motored across to fuel dock for our last pump-out of the season.
Then back in our slip I winterized the A/C units. Then packed up almost all the items we were taking off the boat for the winter and stuffed them into the car. I also emptied the fridges but left them on – we need towels etc when the freezer defrosts to contain any melt water.

All in all a fantastic week-end - that is 2 Thanksgivings in a row that have been awesome on the boat.

Mary relaxing back at Bridgeview

Will and Sea Ray puppy

Will flaked out. To explain, that is actually my beer not his.............

Odd Jobs

Saturday Sept 24th was a near perfect day. William had races ongoing at the track all week-end so I was up alone. So, I took the opportunity to get some jobs done.

Engine oil – got the oil changed in the big boys – with the West Marine siphon pump system this is a pretty painless process – only trick is to get the oil hot enough.

Master cabin TV. I finally got the wooden veneered shelf installed and the new 22” LED TV installed and secured. It certainly looks nicer than the old CRT TV that was there. In the picture below you can see the digital cable box to the left of the TV that I wrote about in such detail a few weeks ago!

New LED TV and veneered shelf in the Master cabin.

Stove top. I picked the new stove top up from our sales office in Detroit. I send all my orders there – it saves me paying the brokerage fees crossing the boarded and often shipping within the US is free. Anyway – I got the stove out of the counter and removed the shattered cook top. The new cook top comes with a metal frame bonded to it. This had separated on the broken one. So I set to work removing about 20 screws to dis-assemble the stove. Basically the stove is in a metal ‘box’. And everything is screwed to this box. So, to remove the cook top frame you have to literally take the stove apart. The controls get unscrewed. And the burners sit on a frame attached to and suspended above the box. But as you unscrew the burner frame it drops out of position. The instructions were not that helpful so ……I threw them away and went at it. It took a couple of hours but I got the new cook top installed and working. In fact the new top has the latest graphics that do look a lot nicer than the old one. I think I am now qualified to work at Kenyon Marine in the stove assembly department.

The old stove top - very broken and held togetgher with tape.

The new stove top - actually nicer than the old one (even before it broke).

Canvas – I took the canvas top pieces off the boat and sprayed water proofing on them. In fact I did the forward piece the week before and the aft one this week-end. In heavy rains we were seeing some dripping through the canvas so it was time. It seems to help – at least the water beads on the canvas again. We will see if it is more water-proof.

Deck hatch in the head – I listed in the last post this was leaking and on the project list. Well, on the Friday evening it was raining pretty good and the hatch was indeed leaking. But I took a good look at were the leak was. In fact the handle had come loose and since it screws to the cap or plug on the outside, this to was loose and letting a large quantity of water pour in. So, with a simple tightening of the screw I think I may have fixed that. I didn’t have time to get the hose on it but it will rain this week so we will see if it was the only leak.