Bahama 2018 Preparation

Its been a long couple of months updating the boat for our summer voyage. We wanted a water maker, so we had to upgrade the solar panels, solar controllers and circuit breaker panel. Lots of drilling holes in my boat, stringing cables and pipes in difficult positions through inconvenient cabinets. A new LED stern light is mounted on the solar panels and a new LED light string to replace the incandescent light over the BBQ.

The anchor chain was very rusted so we have 150 ft of new chain and an additional 200 ft of line. The splice seems to go through the winch OK but we only tried it once.

We have new lines, main halyard, topping lift and jib sheet plus spare rope to make a new dingy painter, dock lines and fender lines, a job I left until we have spare time on our voyage.

Also new shelves in the galley and behind the circuit breaker panel to organize the jumble of things that get stashed in those large spaces. Now we have specific niches for the winch handles, gloves, portable VHF, horn and most important, drink cozies.

We have new curtains made with Sunbrella fabric so they should not deteriorate like the last set did. They are fastened with Velcro instead of suction cups like the last set. The standard Velcro does not stick to the fiberglass interior for long but I found some Industrial Velcro at Home Depot that works so far. We also got blue hatch covers that keep the interior much cooler and line bags to replace the original ones that were sun damaged.

We replaced our original bed cushion with a custom mattress that is much more comfortable. The company came out and measured the berth and the mattress they built fit perfectly and is much more comfortable. The fabric for the original cushion was used to replace the fabric on the Starboard forward berth cushion which had deteriorated because it was located under a hatch and UV had attacked it.

Cathy has been cooking, freezing and vacuum sealing lots of food and trying to preserve cheese by spritzing it with vinegar, wrapping it in cheese cloth and vacuum sealing portions of a variety of different cheeses.

Our cloths, towels and sheets are packed in vacuum bags.