Ticked a few things off the to do list the past few days.

New Years Eve day, Dawn worked on the masts and booms filling all the holes we don't need anymore with Belzona 1111. Thanks to at for helping us get started. Dawn is really good at these kinds of projects that require being neat and detailed oriented. I'm better at breaking things an making a mess.

The bilge hoses have all been replaced. This took a little longer than planned because I used stiffer hose which added some unforeseen complexity. It also became delayed due to an apparent shortage of 316 SS hose clamps in the size I needed. Fisheries Supply in Seattle is horrible at managing their stock, but their prices are better than West Marine. Included in this a Perko bronze strainer for the manual bilg pump and an inline check-valv on the stern end of the secondaylarge bilge pump. I am considering walling off the aft-most section of the bilge to minimize the area which stays wet. We would place the primary pump in that section but if we had more water than that then it flow over the wall and we would kick on the secondary pump. We also need to put a float switch on the primary bilge pump, currently it is only enabled by the breaker switch.

The Walter Machine RV-20 V-Drive has a raw water cooling chamber on the top of it which is prone to corrosion. Eventually it can corrode through allowing sea water to mix with the oil in the bottom half of the v-drive where all the gears are. This would be bad. Several owners have cleaned up the corrosion and used Marine-Tex to protect the area before hooking everything back up. Some owners (including my surveyor who also owns a Pearson 424) have removed the raw water cooling altogether. The corrosion in my unit is so bad that it damaged one of the bolt holes used to attach the top plate to the v-drive so I am going the route of leaving the unit dry. So now instead the raw cooling water going from the strainer to the v-drive and then to the egine it now goes directly from the strainer to the engine. I will install a temperature gauge on the v-drive to monitor it for overheating and I left the hoses in place so I could hook it up back if it ever did overheat. Eventually we will probably replace the v-drive, but that is not something we wanted to do right now.

I have not finished this yet, but the anchor washdown pump was not protected by a strainer. I purchased all the hoses, clamps and the Sherwood strainer. This will get installed completed tomorrow. I would have finished it today, but I forgot to buy the mounting bracket.

I also capped off the vent thru-hull that used to be part of the holding bag system. I will also being putting a plug on the inside portion of the deck fiting for pumping out. I thought about removing and glassing these closed, but I don't this it's neccesary, capping them of is adequate redundance. I also put a plug in the thru-hull I eventually plan to use for the water maker. It has a ball valve, but I like the added security of the plug as well. This is something we'll do just before we plan to leave.

All in all it was nice to tick a few thing off the list, but we still have a ways to go!