S/V Deep Playa - Pearson 424

The boat show is much improved over last years noticeably smaller event. The show is more fleshed out and I believe there are more new seminars than in years past, but I've not done my spreadsheet magic to verify that. Saturday Dawn and I focused on walking the floor and seeing what the deals were. I have a short list of needs including getting quotes on the wire and connectors for our NMEA 2000 instrument network.

We attended Carol Hasse's sail inventory seminar. She gave a great talk explaining the different sails a cruiser might want aboard given their rig type. Dawn found the very helpful as Carol does a great job of explaining everything with just enough but not too much sailing jargon. We had previously received a quote from CArol and she was the cheaper of the high-end sailmakers. We're about 99.9% sure we plan to buy our sales through Port Townsend Sails. I'll do a write up of our sail plan in the near future.

At Hasse's talk we also met Nicole and Aaron from s/v Bella Star we also had drinks with later that night back at the marina on s/v Palarran. Aaron found me through this blog. He and Nicole are taking the Seattle Maritime Academy's diesel class taught by professor grumpy and they confirmed he is indeed still a nut. We told them to tough out the lecture , the lab is worth it. We also ran into Craig from s/v Luckness who we originally met when Dawn and I took the diesel class.

LArry Brandt gave a great talk on cruising the sound. He covered Olympia and Shelton. I want to make it down to Olympia one of these times so I'm glad we got some local knowledge form Larry. Larry is also a teacher for Starpath and I have a feeling we'll be seeing him in the future as we take a few more classes.

Great first day at the show! We're headed out the door right now for day two.

The Boat show started yesterday and today will be day one of a multiday journey to the show. If you're not alread, check us out on Twitter at @DeepPlaya. I'll be sending out pics of cool things and comments on the show and seminars. Also check out the hashtag #seabtshw to see if anyone is also tweeting.

We’ve been working pretty hard this weekend and got through the following list of things:

• The new prop shaft from The Prop Shop, Ltd is installed !! It’s very shiny. The prop has been dry fit and hand tightened I need a couple of 12” wrenches to tighten it properly. Included in that is a new coupling, new keys and new stuffing box packing. We used 1/4” Tefpack from Western Pacific Trading
• All of the scuppers\cockpit drains (there are 6) now have new 1-1/2” hoses and 316 stainless steel hose clamps. I’ve been working on this slowly ever since we hauled out. These were last replaced in 1999 and the old hose clamps were inferior and rusted. Along with these the galley and head sink drain hoses were replaced as well.
• The diesel fill hose has been removed. I’m having some issues getting the new hose installed and I’m seeking advice on tight fitting hoses on Cruiser’s Forum. This hose was labeled 1980 and was original (yikes).
• All of the seacocks have been lubricated.
• We made some progress on our chainplates. I think were’ about half-way through sanding them all with 100 grit. We only have to sand them about 4 times each with progressively finer and finer grit and then polish them.
• Dawn has started work on the furring strips for the aft berth. She has to take a 1x1 piece of wood and then kerf it so it will bend against the hull. These will be glassed in and used to attach the ash battens. She plans to line the aft berth and the v-berth in this way. It’s going to look gorgeous.

That’s a pretty good list of things… We wanted to work on installing the new T-Track on the port toerail which Dawn prepped previously, but the weather wasn’t dry enough. We’re going to watch our weather windows and just jump on that at our first chance.

I can definitely see a light at the end of the tunnel!!

Dawn and I went to Port Townsend, WA last weekend. We unfortunately did not sail instead we took the land dinghy (Subaru Forester) and all of our standing rigging and chain plates to Port Townsend Rigging to have it inspected and plan for its replacement. Port Townsend Rigging comes highly recommended. In fact, I can’t think of any boat services in Port Townsend that people don’t like. I have not had any work done by PT Rigging in the past and this was my first time meeting them.

I had an email exchange with Lisa to get a ballpark estimate and I had a great phone conversation with her as well. Lisa and Dan were flexible and willing to meet with us on a Saturday which we really appreciated. This would allow them to see what we had and to and allow us to make the go\no-go decision.

Lisa and Dan are the nicest people and easy deal with. They explained everything in lots of detail which if you’ve seen my wiring diagram you know I love! Even better, they took the time to answer questions not just about the standing rigging but some of my other rigging projects. They even did the unthinkable which is recommend where we could save a few bucks by reusing components of our existing rigging or where my other plans were unnecessary and costly (e.g., custom fabrication Vs. off the shelf parts).

Big takeaway from that is they’re hired. They’re going to do all of our standing rigging. Dawn and I are going to sand and polish our chain plates. We’ll have more on that process in a future post.

Here’s a little tip for you locals here in Seattle. The Fisheries Supply online store which can tell you if things are in stock does not actually reflect what is in stock. I’m not sure how they built their system with out doing that right. But I called in today to check on something and the person on the phone confirmed that the web site and actual inventory are not hooked up.

Call first!