The Little Jobs...Doo Daa

Ken & Vicky, who live aboard s/v Painkiller give us a look at several small projects.  And they demonstrate the benefits of scrounging thru the bins at boaters' second-hand stores!

Since arriving in St Augustine last Monday we've pretty much been taking a deserved break from the 58 day work sprint on the hard, in Fernandina Beach. Dang, it feels good!  As some of you know, on a boat there is always plenty to do and improve on so taking a full all day break can be harder than imagined even if your trying. On the way here we had engine problems, nothing catastrophic just a pain in the ass issue than seems to be getting somewhat better and another full run day should expose more clues. I'm tired of looking at it and I've spent way too much time in the engine compartment over the last few weeks. So I pushed it aside mentally for now, feeling we could still make it to our next destination south with little problem and deal with it there in a more serious mind set.

We always had intentions to stop here to do some trading at the Sailors Exchange, a sort of  conglomeration of used and a few new boat parts all sorted (kinda) and stacked. The crew is very friendly and they're looking to make a deal as much as your looking to get a deal. If you keep that in mind, trading with them is a good experience. We had a pile of  good thru-hulls that I had no use for, I kept a few, and offered them three, a 1 1/2" and two 3/4",  they right away offered a fair price that we could have in store credit. Even when we brought stuff to the counter to buy they were more than generous at pricing it to deduct from credit. To me, they were completely fair and a pleasure to deal with. Win, win.

This is my first boat that didn't come with a nice flagstaff for the stern. I always was a flag guy and always enjoyed the routine of setting it at 8:00 am  and taking it down at sunset. I could have made one, with time that I didn't have, but thankfully we found this (hanging upside down in the picture getting varnish) one at Sailors Exchange in need of a good sanding and varnish stuffed in a corner. Also got a base mount for it. With the dingy davits and other stuff crowding the stern rail it's a bit of a challenge picking a spot. More than likely it will go on top of the davits after I fabricate some sort of platform for the flag base mount to mount on.

This old mainsheet teak cheek block had seen better days, not to mention it was too low so it dragged along the cabin top creating more friction. I had the teak, Sailors Exchange had the longer bolts and it was down right fun shaping this block in the sunny cockpit. The hardest part of that job was the dissembling of the headliner down below and carefully putting it back.

At the store, I looked and looked and shuffled through bins and bins of blocks and sleeves and could not find what I needed to complete the new traveler assembly I installed back at Tiger Point, so I ordered what I wanted through them, at their discount plus a little. The fairlead block at the bottom of the picture lets the traverler sheet enter under the future dodger just above the coaming that it will snap to. This will insure that under the dodger at this point will stay as dry as possible. The mainsheet (block in above picture) also enters under the dodger in this area.  That green canvas thingy that's pretending to be some sort of flat dodger that's  tied to that wire, stretched between two eye bolts is most definitely on it's way out.

If you are ever in the need of bronze plumbing you will be blown away at the cost of new. As we should all know, plain old brass is a complete NO GO on a boat with anything to do below the water-line. The sailors Exchange is the perfect place (you must have time and patience to dig and push through and dig and sort through bins chuck full of fittings and search everywhere all around for other bins) to pick up some of the very expensive parts at a mere fraction of the cost!!!!!  This assembly or an assembly something like it will be the new raw water manifold. It will feed multiple sources of salt water throughout the boat from one thru-hull and strainer.

Other little jobs took place this week also, some resorting of lockers, (that will take years aboard to finally end) mounted a LifeSling etc, etc. The never ending pile of what I like to call Doo Daa!